SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Social structure is a term used in the social sciences to refer to patterned social arrangements which form the society as a whole, and which determine, to some varying degree, the actions of the individuals socialized into that structure. The meaning of "social structure" differs between various fields of sociology. On the macro scale, it can refer to the system of socioeconomic stratification (e.g., the class structure), social institutions, or, other patterned relations between large social groups. On the meso scale, it can refer to the structure of social network ties between individuals or organizations. On the micro scale, it can refer to the way norms shape the behavior of actors within the social system.
These meanings are not always kept separate. For example, recent scholarship by John Levi Martin has theorized that certain macro-scale structures are the emergent properties of micro-scale cultural institutions (this meaning of "structure" resembles that used by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss). Marxist sociology also has a history of mixing different meanings of social structure, though it has done so by simply treating the cultural aspects of social structure as epiphenomena of its economic ones.
Since the 1930s, the term has been in general use in social science, especially as a variable whose sub-components needed to be distinguished in relationship to other sociological variables.
Overview
The notion of social structure as relationships between different entities or groups or as enduring and relatively stable patterns of relationship emphasises the idea that society is grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings or purposes. One example of social structure is the idea of "social stratification", which refers to the idea that society is separated into different strata (levels), guided (if only partially) by the underlying structures in the social system. This approach has been important in the academic literature with the rise of various forms of structuralism. It is important in the modern study of organizations, because an organization's structure may determine its flexibility, capacity to change, and many other factors. Therefore, structure is an important issue for management.
Social structure may be seen to influence important social systems including the economic system, legal system, political system, cultural system, and others. Family, religion, law, economy and class are all social structures. The "social system" is the parent system of those various systems that are embedded in it.
Society: self contained, self sufficient population united by social relationships, bounded from other populations by geographic locations
Stratification: unequal distribution of valued goods or holdings in a population (i.e. class, status, resources, grades, wealth, positional goods, etc.)
Network: pattern of relationships in a population of actors
Social structure variables: pattern of relationships, size of institution, income distribution, and concurrency of social relationships
History
The early study of social structures has informed the study of institutions, culture and agency, social interaction, and history. Alexis de Tocqueville was apparently the first to use the term social structure; later, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Max Weber, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Émile Durkheim all contributed to structural concepts in sociology. Weber investigated and analyzed the institutions of modern society: market, bureaucracy (private enterprise and public administration), and politics (e.g. democracy).
One of the earliest and most comprehensive accounts of social structure was provided by Karl Marx, who related political, cultural, and religious life to the mode of production (an underlying economic structure). Marx argued that the economic base substantially determined the cultural and political superstructure of a society. Subsequent Marxist accounts, such as that by Louis Althusser, proposed a more complex relationship that asserted the relative autonomy of cultural and political institutions, and a general determination by economic factors only "in the last instance".
In 1905, the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies first published his study The Present Problems of Social Structure in the U.S.A, in: arguing that only the constitution of a multitude into a unity creates a "social structure" (basing this approach on his concept of social will).
Émile Durkheim (drawing on the analogies between biological and social systems popularized by Herbert Spencer and others) introduced the idea that diverse social institutions and practices played a role in assuring the functional integration of society — the assimilation of diverse parts into a unified and self-reproducing whole. In this context, Durkheim distinguished two forms of structural relationship: mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. The former describes structures that unite similar parts through a shared culture; the latter describes differentiated parts united through exchange and material interdependence.
Georg Simmel develop Weber did but more generally), competition, division of labor, formation of parties, representation, inner solidarity coupled with exclusiveness toward the outside, and many similar features in the state, in a religious community, in an economic association, in an art school, and in family and kinship networks (however diverse the interests that give rise to these associations, the forms in which interests are realized may yet be identical (Crothers, 1996)).
The notion of social structure was extensively developed in the 20th century, with key contributions from structuralist perspectives drawing on the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Feminist or Marxist perspectives, from functionalist perspectives such as those developed by Talcott Parsons and his followers, or from a variety of analytic perspectives (see Blau 1975, Lopez and Scott 2000). Some follow Marx in trying to identify the basic dimensions of society that explain the other dimensions, most emphasizing either economic production or political power. Others follow Lévi-Strauss in seeking logical order in cultural structures. Still others, notably Peter Blau, follow Simmel in attempting to base a formal theory of social structure on numerical patterns in relationships—analyzing, for example, the ways in which factors like group size shape intergroup relations.
The notion of social structure is intimately related to a variety of central topics in social science, including the relation of structure and agency. The most influential attempts to combine the concept of social structure with agency are Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory. Giddens emphasizes the duality of structure and agency, in the sense that structures and agency cannot be conceived apart from one another. This permits him to argue that structures are neither independent of actors nor determining of their behavior, but rather sets of rules and competencies on which actors draw, and which, in the aggregate, they reproduce. Giddens's analysis, in this respect, closely parallels Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of the binaries that underlie classic sociological and anthropological reasoning (notably the universalizing tendencies of Lévi-Strauss's structuralism). Bourdieu's practice theory also seeks a more supple account of social structure as embedded in, rather than determinative of, individual behavior.
Other recent work by Margaret Archer (morphogenesis theory), Tom R. Burns and collaborators (actor-system dynamics theory and social rule system theory), and Immanuel Wallerstein (World Systems Theory) provided elaborations and applications of the sociological classics in structural sociology.

RULES OF STATUS: ASCRIPTION AND ACHIEVEMENT

Achieved status is a position gained based on merit, or achievement (used in an open system). An open system describes a society with mobility between different social classes. Individuals can move up or down in the social rankings; this is unlike closed systems, where individuals are set in one social position for life despite their achievements. Ascribed status is a position based on who a person is, not what they can do (used in a closed system). When this ascriptive status rule is used (Medieval Europe), people are placed in a position based on personal traits beyond their control. Mobility is much more frequent in countries that use achievement as the basis for status. However, societies differ on the amount of mobility that occurs due to the direction of structural changes in their overall status systems. The process by which an individual alters the ascribed social status of their parents into an achieved social status for themselves is called Social Transformation.
8 Intergenerational mobility
Inter-generational mobility is a measure of the changes in social status which occurs from the parents' to the children's generation. It can effect anyone in the population, as one’s economic standing can increase or decrease from the position they were born into. Our society is constantly changing, and because of this various opportunities can cause one to advance or digress in their economic standing. One’s talents can cause them to surpass the economic position into which they were born.
Many see intergenerational mobility as a way of measuring the equality present in the economic opportunities of a society. It takes a realistic approach of how much of your future economic standing is determined by your childhood experience and how much is determined by an individual’s talents and capabilities. Inter-generational mobility can best be determined by analyzing where children from the least or most affluent families end up in terms of incomes and earnings as adults. Their income as adults is then compared to what their parents earned.
Inter-generational mobility is generally measured in terms of intergenerational elasticity, or a statistical correlation between parent’s and children’s economic standings. The higher the intergenerational elasticity, the less social mobility a society offers. In other words, the higher the intergenerational elasticity, the more of a role childhood upbringing plays when compared to individual talents and capabilities.
Intergenerational mobility is a pressing current issue.] The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal published a series of front-page articles on this issue in May 2005. America is seen as a ‘land of opportunity’ where anyone can succeed despite their background. Recent studies conducted on intergenerational mobility have shown this title to be a misnomer.] According to data collected from 1992–2000, there are varying levels of intergenerational mobility across different nations.] According to the study], Britain and the United States have the lowest levels of intergenerational mobility, or the highest levels of intergenerational persistence. The Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland) and Canada tend to have high rates of social mobility. Norway itself proved to be the most mobile. Germany was also included in this study and was found to be in the middle of the scale.
Effects on Intergenerational Mobility
There are many debates surrounding the effects on intergenerational mobility.
• Educational Factor Changes in intergenerational mobility are at times attributed to educational opportunities. Over the years, mobility in the Nordic countries has increased. One possible reason for this equality in opportunity is the implementation of policies of school reform which lessen the financial strain of schooling on families, therefore making one’s economic background play less of a role in determining their educational attainments. This in turn makes one’s economic background play less of a role in their future economic earnings.
However, the findings are inconclusive. A study by Pekkala and Lucas shows how mobility sharply increased for individuals born around 1950 compared to those born around 1930. A possible reason suggested for this trend was the growth of secondary schooling. Yet, this study simply discovered a correlation or association between education and mobility. Such a study does not determine causation.
Head-Start Assets
Shapiro uses the term head-start assets to refer to the assets that children can inherit from their parents that give them a “head-start” in life when compared to individuals who do not have these head-start assets. A good example of a head-start asset would be an inheritance that a child receives from his or her parents which gives them the amount of money required to put a down payment on a home. “This is a quick way of identifying families that might potentially receive large enough financial assistance to transform biographies, improve their class standing, and attain advantages for at least one child”. In order to examine the trends in head-start assets and inheritances between whites and African-Americans Shapiro used data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics from the year 1984 to 1999. When examining head-start assets along racial lines, whites are 2.4 times more likely than blacks to have parents with substantial wealth resources that can be used to give them an advantage in life. Data also reveal that among white families who received an inheritance the amount received averages at $76,000, while the average inheritance received by African-Americans was $31,000. Even when African-Americans are lucky enough to receive some sort of a head-start endowment they are receiving, on average, less than half of what the average white person gets. A lower-income individual fortunate enough to receive a substantial inheritance from their parents at some point in their life will also have the opportunity to escape the debt trap that many low-income families experience in the United States today. Because people who live on low yearly income must resort to credit to finance a great deal of their purchases they often fall short on payments and fall into a perpetual cycle of constant debt that may last their entire lives. A substantial inheritance would enable such an individual to clear their debt and allow them to chance to possibly focus the investment of their earnings on cultivating the growth of human capital in their children.
One such advantage that an individual who receives these head-start assets can enjoy is in the form of enhanced cultural capital. “Cultural capital refers to an understanding of what gives a person advantages or disadvantages in school, business, and social situations” (Shapiro 66). Those individuals fortunate enough to inherit a substantial amount of money and propel themselves into a class above the one in which they are currently a member gain the associated higher levels of cultural capital that go along with belonging to a higher social class. For instance, an inheritance that allows a family to move from a neighborhood with a poorer public school to one with a more well-endowed school and reap the benefits in cultural capital from the greater range of extracurricular activities that are offered. The structured extracurricular activities that are absent in schools with low funding and present in schools with high funding provide students with structure in their lives and also the opportunity to interact with other adults and learn important social skills that may benefit them later in life. Those children without access to such programs lack the opportunity to develop certain forms of social and cultural capital that would have otherwise helped them to advance their status in their future. Low-income families who do not receive these head-start assets do not have the opportunity to develop the cultural capital that is necessary to advance oneself to a higher status later in life.
Relating back to intergenerational mobility, it is easy to discern that this type of pattern that is becoming more and more evident in recent decades has the overall effect of further solidifying one’s class and status position throughout life. Individuals who come from wealthy families will continue to get head-start assets while those from poorer families will continue not to. The effect of this is an overall decrease in intergenerational mobility, especially for low-income African-Americans who, on average, have much worse prospects concerning head-start assets and inheritance.
Effects of Government Spending on Intergenerational Mobility
The standard model for examining intergenerational mobility says that if you were to hold a child's genetic endowments at a constant level, investments in his or her development of human capital increases his or her future income. This is an easy concept to understand if you imagine two children of equal ability, one of whom is cultivated with a high quality education from a young age and the other who does not receive that same educational opportunity. Since genetic predisposition to succeed is held constant it is clear that the child who receives the higher quality education will have a greater chance to succeed as they mature.
Since many parents in low-income families lack the wealth to give their children these opportunities, another source for these investments in their children's human capital is government spending. A study by Mayer and Lopoo uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the U.S. Census of Governments to compare the relationship between government spending from state to state within the United States and intergenerational mobility for the residents in those states. Their results show that in states that have the highest government spending for programs which have an obvious uplifting effect on low-income families and their children, such as Welfare programs or increased spending on education, the highest levels of intergenerational mobility are found. They found, overall, that an 84% increase in government spending across all of the states led to a 34.6% decline in intergenerational elasticity. As one would expect, the effects of increased levels of government spending and assistance on the future income of children is far greater in those children who come from low-income families as opposed to the children who are raised in a high-income family.

This study on the relationship between government spending and intergenerational mobility are not meant to suggest that blind increases in government spending are the solution to increasing intergenerational mobility in the United States and narrowing the economic inequality gap that exists. This study does reveal that raising some forms of government spending that are especially beneficial to low-income families can substitute for the absence of income that those families have: income that they might elect to invest in the future of their child and the development of their human capital.

SOCIAL MOBILITY IN THE COMMUNITIES

in sociology and economics, as well as in common political discourse, social mobility can refer to both horizontal mobility which (partially overlapping with geographic migrations, including immigration) denotes movement from one position to another within the same social level, as changing jobs without altering occupational status, or moving between social groups having the same social status, and, on the other hand, more usually to vertical mobility defined as the degree to which an individual's or group's status is able to change in terms of position in the social hierarchy due to movement from one social level to a higher one (upward vertical mobility) or a lower one (downward vertical mobility) due to changing jobs or marrying).

Mobility is enabled to a varying and debatable extent by economic capital, cultural capital (such as higher education or an authoritative accent), human capital (such as competence and effort in labour), social capital (such as support from one's social network), physical capital (such as ownership of tools, or the 'means of production'), and symbolic capital (such as the worth of an official title, status class, celebrity, etc).
Many of these factors, however, ultimately remain intertwined with economic capital. In modern nation states, policy issues such as welfare, education and public transport exercise influence. In other societies religious affiliation, caste membership, or simple geography may be of central importance. The extent to which a nation is open and meritocratic is fundamental: a society in which traditional or religious caste systems dominate is unlikely to present the opportunity for social mobility.
Inter- and Intra-generational mobility
Intra-generational mobility ("within" a generation) is defined as change in social status over a single life-time. Inter-generational mobility ("across" generations) is defined as changes in social status that occur from the parents' to the children's generation. These definitions have proven particularly useful when analyzing how social status changes from one time-period to another, and if a person's parents' social status influences that of their own. Sociologists usually focus on intergenerational mobility because it is easier to depict changes across generations rather than within one. This information helps sociologists determine whether inequality in a culture changes over time.
Intra-generational mobility occurs when a person strives to change his or her own social standing. In some societies, this type of change is easier than in others. In social systems where people are divided into castes or ethnic groups, social mobility is limited. Any persons born into a certain caste or ethnic group will remain a member of that group for their entire life. However, in cultures where social standing is determined by factors that can change across generations, such as merit, education, skills, abilities, actions or wealth, people can move up and down the social ladder.
Intra-generational mobility can move a person either higher or lower in the social ladder. If a person starts at a low level, they may improve their status by (for example) working hard, getting a better job, or becoming more culturally sound, to name a few possible approaches. Pierre Bourdieu describes three types of capital that place a person in a certain social category. These are economic capital, social capital, and cultural capital. Economic capital is command over economic resources such as money and assets. Social capital is resources one achieves based on group membership, relationships, networks of influence, and support from other people. Cultural capital is any advantage a person has that gives them a higher status in society, such as education, skills, and any other form of knowledge. Usually, people with all three types of capital have a high status in society.
Inter-generational mobility occurs across generations. This mobility is both merit- and non-merit-based. Ability and hard work affect social mobility, but so do race, gender, luck, and parents' wealth,. Fiona Devine wrote a book, Class practices: how parents help their children get good jobs, specifically on inter-generational mobility and how parents' influence can affect the child's social mobility. Nearly every chapter emphasizes the importance of a good education in order to become successful. Parents also help children make important connections with people in order to expand their social network. Parents that can create social capital for their children tend to increase their children's social mobility.
Research published in 2006 and based on collecting data on the economic mobility of families across generations looked at the probability of reaching a particular income-distribution with regard to where their parents were ranked. The study found that 42 percent of those whose parents were in the bottom quintile ended up in the bottom quintile themselves, 23 percent of them ended in the second quintile, 19 percent in the middle quintile, 11 percent in the fourth quintile and 6 percent in the top quintile. These data indicate the difficulty of upward intergenerational mobility.
Annette Lareau disusses child-raising in her book, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (2003). She describes two different ways to raise children: concerted cultivation and natural growth:
1. Concerted cultivation, normally used by middle-class families, incorporates scheduling many structured, organized activities for the child. Such children learn to use their language to reason with parents and other adults, and they often adopt a sense of entitlement.
2. Natural growth is almost the exact opposite of concerted cultivation. Occurring mainly in poor or working-class families, this style of childrearing does not include organized activities, and there is a clear division between the adult and the child. Children usually spend large amounts of their day creating their own activities, and they hardly ever speak with adults. In fact, adults use language in order to direct or order the children, never to negotiate with them.
These two different types of childrearing can affect inter-generational mobility. Children who grow up with a concerted cultivation style of childrearing learn from their parents how to talk with adults as equals and negotiate to get favorable outcomes in any situation. This skill helps them create powerful social networks, which can improve their social standing. Children with natural growth accomplishment tend to have a more difficult time improving their social standing. They lack the social skills and sense of entitlement that children raised with the concerted cultivation method have, and therefore are less likely to acquire good jobs (and therefore, improve their social standing). Children who have been raised with natural growth do learn to comply with authority figures, instead of arguing with them, which gives them an advantage over concerted cultivated children in certain fields of employment. However, those are generally the entry-level fields (which pay people to follow orders and not to think) and are therefore the lower-paying ones, whereas the middle-class concertedly cultivated children's reasoning skills aid them in attaining the higher-paying, higher-prestige white-collar jobs.
Absolute and Relative Mobility
Absolute mobility means that living standards are increasing in absolute terms: You are better off than your parents, and your children will be better off than you. Structural changes, such as changes in occupational structure rates, mean that there is more room at the top, which leads to high absolute mobility rates. For example, suppose a person begins their working career with an income of $32,000. If a decade later their income is $36,000 (adjusted for inflation), they have experienced upward absolute income mobility.
Relative mobility refers to the degree to which individuals move up or down compared to others in their cohort. In other words, relative mobility means that if your family is poor, you have a decent chance of moving up the relative income ladder. That is, the rank order of people in society is malleable. Relative mobility relates to the openness or fluidity of society and is insensitive to the impact of structural changes. For example, suppose a person’s income increases from $32,000 at the start of his working career to $36,000 a decade later, whereas most other people who began their work life around the same time experienced a larger increase. The person has experienced upward absolute mobility but downward relative mobility.
Because relative mobility depends on one’s place in the distribution, it is a zero-sum phenomenon. In other words, if one person moves up in relative terms, another by definition must have moved down. In contrast, absolute mobility is not zero-sum.
Although both absolute and relative mobility are both forms of intragenerational mobility, these two have very little to do with each other. High absolute mobility rates can co-exist with highly unequal relative mobility chances. Thus, you can have an economy with a lot of absolute mobility, and little relative mobility or an economy with a lot of relative mobility, and little absolute mobility. Social mobility is an act of moving from one social class to another. The amount of movement up and down the class structure would indicate the extent of social mobility prevalent in the society. The social mobility is greatly influenced by the level of openness of the society. An open society is the one where people attain their status primarily by their own efforts. In fact the extent of mobility may be taken as an index of openness of a society indicating how far talented individuals born into lower strata can move up the socio-economic ladder. In this respect, social mobility is an important political issue, particularly in countries committed to a liberal vision of equality of opportunity for all citizens. In this perspective industrial societies are mostly open societies exhibiting high social mobility. Compared with them, pre-industrial societies have mostly been found to be closed societies where there has been low social mobility. People in such societies have been confined to their ancestral occupations, and their social status has mostly been ascribed. Social mobility can be classified as: Vertical mobility: The movement of individuals and groups up or down the socioeconomic scale. Those who gain in property, income, status, and position are said to be upwardly mobile, while those who move in the opposite direction are downwardly mobile. Horizontal mobility: The movement of individuals and groups in similar socio-economic positions, which may be in different work situations. This may involve change in occupation or remaining in the same occupation but in a different organization, or may be in the same organization but at a different location. Lateral mobility: It is a geographical movement between neighborhoods, towns or regions. In modern societies there is a great deal of geographical mobility.] Lateral mobility is often combined with vertical as well as horizontal mobility. The movement of people up or down the social hierarchy can be looked at either within one generation called intra-generational mobility or between generations labeled as inter-generational mobility. Intra-generational mobility consists of movement up and down the stratification system by members of a single generation (the-social class in which you began life compared with your social class at the end of your life). Inter-generational mobility consists of movement up and down the stratification system by members of successive generations of a family (your social class location compared with that of your parents, for example). Comparison is usually made between social class status of son and father. Mobility is functional. Open societies provide opportunities to their members for the development of their talents and working toward their individual fulfillment. At the same time a person can select the best person for doing a particular job

FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN THE SOCIETY

The feminist movement (also known as the Women's Movement, Women's Liberation, or Women's Lib) refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women's suffrage, sexual harassment and sexual violence. The movement's priorities vary among nations and communities and range from opposition to female genital cutting in one country or to the glass ceiling in another.

The movement began in the western world in the late 18th century and has gone through three waves: the first wave was oriented around the station of middle or upper-class white women, and involved suffrage and political equality. Second-wave feminism attempted to further combat social and cultural inequalities. Third-wave feminism (c.1980-c.1990) (cited from Open Boundaries University text book),] includes renewed campaigning for women’s greater influence in politics.
The history of feminist movements has been divided into three "waves" by feminist scholars.[1][2] Each deals with different aspects of the same feminist issues.
The history, events, and structure of the feminist movement is closely related to the individuals at the time, specific protests that took place, and the broader transformations taking place in American culture. The feminist movement worked and continues to work against the status quo in American society. According to bell hooks, "Feminism is a struggle against sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion and material desires."
First wave
The first wave refers to the feminist movement of the 18th through early 20th centuries, which dealt mainly with the women's suffrage. Writers such as Virginia Woolf are associated with the ideas of the first wave of feminism. In her book A Room of One's Own, Woolf "describes how men socially and psychically dominate women". The argument of the book is that "women are simultaneously victims of themselves as well as victims of men and are upholders of society by acting as mirrors to men". She recognizes the social constructs that restrict women in society and uses literature to contextualize it for other women.
The term "first-wave" was coined retrospectively after the term second-wave feminism began to be used to describe a newer feminist movement that focused as much on fighting social and cultural inequalities as further political inequalities.
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal rights [1][2][3]. Feminism is mainly focused on women's issues, but because feminism seeks gender equality, some feminists argue that men's liberation is therefore a necessary part of feminism, and that men are also harmed by sexism and gender roles. Feminists—that is, persons practicing feminism—may be persons of either sex.
Feminist theory emerged from these feminist movements[4][5] and includes general theories and theories about the origins of inequality, and, in some cases, about the social construction of sex and gender, in a variety of disciplines. Feminist activists have campaigned for women's rights—such as in contract, property, and voting—while also promoting women's rights to bodily integrity and autonomy and reproductive rights. They have opposed domestic violence, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. In economics, they have advocated for workplace rights, including equal pay and opportunities for careers and to start businesses. Some of the earlier forms of feminism have been criticized for being geared towards white, middle-class, educated perspectives. This led to the creation of ethnically-specific or multiculturalist forms of feminism.
In Britain, the Suffragettes campaigned for the women's vote, which was eventually granted − to some women in 1918 and to all in 1928 − as much because of the part played by British women during the First World War, as of the efforts of the Suffragists. In the United States leaders of this movement included Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who each campaigned for the abolition of slavery prior to championing women's right to vote. Other important leaders include Lucy Stone, Olympia Brown, and Helen Pitts. American first-wave feminism involved a wide range of women, some belonging to conservative Christian groups (such as Frances Willard and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union), others resembling the diversity and radicalism of much of second-wave feminism (such as Stanton, Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and the National Woman Suffrage Association, of which Stanton was president). In the United States, first-wave feminism is considered to have ended with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1919) granting women the right to vote.

Second wave
The second wave (1960s-1980s) was concerned with gender inequality in laws and culture. It built on what had been achieved in the first wave, and began adapting the ideas to America. Simone de Beauvoir is associated with this wave because of her idea of women as "the other". This idea was touched on in the writing of Woolf, and was adapted to apply not only to the gender roles of women in the household or at work, but also their sexuality. Beauvoir set the tone for later feminist theory.
The second wave of feminist activity began in the early 1960s and lasted through the late 1980s. What helped trigger this second wave was the book written by Betty Friedan.

"The key event that marked the reemergence of this movement in the postwar era was the surprise popularity of Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique. Writing as a housewife and mother (though she had had a long story of political activism, as well), Friedan described the problem with no name the dissatisfaction of educated, middle class wives and mothers like herself who, looking at their nice homes and families, wondered guiltily if that was all there was to life was not new; the vague sense of dissatifaction plaguing housewives was a staple topic for women's magazines in the 1950s. But Friedan, instead of blaming individual women for failing to adapt to women's proper role, blamed the role itself and the society that created it" (Norton, Mary Beth, A people A Nation pg 865. 2005 Houghton Mifflin Company New York.)

During this time feminists campaigned against cultural and political inequalities, which they saw as inextricably linked. The movement encouraged women to understand aspects of their own personal lives as deeply politicized, and reflective of a sexist structure of power. If first-wave feminism focused upon absolute rights such as suffrage, second-wave feminism was largely concerned with other issues of equality, such as the end to discrimination. The feminist activist and author Carol Hanisch coined the slogan "The Personal is Political" which became synonymous with the second wave.

In the early 1990s, a movement, now termed the third wave of feminism, arose in response to the perceived failures of the second wave feminism. In addition to being a response to the backlash against initiatives and movements created by second-wave feminism, the third wave was less reactive, and had a greater focus on developing the different achievements of women in America. The feminist movement as such grew during the third wave, to incorporate a greater number of women who may not have previously identified with the dynamics and goals that were established at the start of the movement. Though criticized as merely a continuation of the second wave, the third wave made its own unique contributions.

Feminist leaders rooted in the second wave like Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, Chela Sandoval, Cherríe Moraga, Audre Lorde, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many other feminists of color, called for a new subjectivity in feminist voice. They sought to negotiate prominent space within feminist thought for consideration of race related subjectivities. This focus on the intersection between race and gender remained prominent through the Hill-Thomas hearings, but began to shift with the Freedom Ride 1992. This drive to register voters in poor minority communities was surrounded with rhetoric that focused on rallying young feminists. For many, the rallying of the young is the emphasis that has stuck within third wave feminism.

JAMES TRAVIS REEVES

James Travis Reeves (August 20, 1923 – July 31, 1964) was an American country and popular music singer-songwriter popular during the 1950s and 1960s who was well-known for being a practitioner of the new, so-called Nashville sound (a mixture of older country-style music with elements of popular music). Known as Gentleman Jim, his songs continued to score the charts for years after his death at age 40 in a private airplane crash. He is a member of both the Country Music and Texas Country Music Halls of Fame.

Jim Reeves was born in Galloway, Texas, a small rural community near Carthage. Winning an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas, he enrolled to study speech and drama, but quit after after six weeks to work in the shipyards in Houston. Soon he resumed baseball, playing in the semi-professional leagues before contracting with the St. Louis Cardinals "farm" team during 1944 as a right-handed pitcher. He played for the minor leagues for three years before severing his sciatic nerve while pitching, which ended his athletic career.[citation needed]
Reeves began to work as a radio announcer, and sang live between songs. During the late 1940s, he was contracted with a couple of small Texas-based recording companies, but without success. Influenced by such Western swing-music artists as Jimmie Rodgers and Moon Mullican, as well as popular singers Bing Crosby, Eddy Arnold and Frank Sinatra, it was not long before he was a member of Moon Mullican's band, and made some early Mullican-style recordings like "Each Beat of my Heart" and "My Heart's Like a Welcome Mat" from the late 1940s to the early 1950s.
He eventually obtained a job as an announcer for KWKH-AM in Shreveport, Louisiana, home of the popular radio program Louisiana Hayride. According to former Hayride master of ceremonies Frank Page, one day singer Sleepy LaBeef was late for a performance for the Hayride, and Reeves was asked to substitute. (Other accounts—-including Reeves himself, in an interview on the RCA album Yours Sincerely—-name Hank Williams as the absentee.)
Initial success in the 1950s
Reeves' first successful country music songs included "I Love You" (a duet with Ginny Wright), "Mexican Joe", "Bimbo" and other songs with both Fabor Records and Abbott Records companies. He recorded only one album for Abbott, 1955's Jim Reeves Sings (Abbott 5001). Eventually he tired of the novelty category, and contracted with the RCA Victor company instead. During 1955, Reeves was signed to a 10-year recording contract by Steve Sholes, who produced some of Reeves' first recordings at RCA and signed Elvis Presley for the company that same year.
For his earliest RCA recordings, Reeves was still singing with the loud style of his first recordings, considered standard for country and western performers at that time. He decreased his volume, using a lower pitch and singing with lips nearly touching the microphone, although there were protests at RCA. During 1957, with the endorsement of his producer Chet Atkins, he used this style for his version of a demonstration song of lost love intended for a female singer. "Four Walls" not only scored #1 on the country music charts, but scored No. 11 on the popular music charts. Reeves had helped begin a new style of country music, using violins and lusher background arrangements soon known as the "Nashville sound".
Reeves became known as a crooner because of his rich light baritone voice. Songs such as "Adios Amigo", "Welcome to My World", and "Am I Losing You?" demonstrated this. His Christmas songs have been perennial favorites, including "C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S", "Blue Christmas" and "An Old Christmas Card".
He is also responsible for popularizing many Gospel songs, including "We Thank Thee", "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", "Across The Bridge", "Where We'll Never Grow Old" and many others.
Early 1960s and international fame
Reeves scored his greatest success with the Joe Allison composition "He'll Have to Go", a great success on both the popular and country music charts, which earned him a platinum record. Released during late 1959, it scored number one on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Songs chart on February 8, 1960, which it scored for 14 weeks consecutive. Country music historian Bill Malone noted that while it was in many ways a conventional country song, its arrangement and the vocal chorus "put this recording in the country pop vein". In addition, Malone lauded Reeves' vocal styling—lowered to "its natural resonant level" to project the "caressing style that became famous"—as why "many people refer to him as the singer with the velvet touch." During 1975, RCA producer Chet Atkins told an interviewer, "Jim wanted to be a tenor but I wanted him to be a baritone... After he changed his voice to that smooth deeper sound, he was immensely popular."
Reeves' international popularity during the 1960s, however, at times surpassed his popularity in the United States, helping to give country music a worldwide market for the first time.
South Africa
During the early 1960s, Reeves was more popular than Elvis Presley in South Africa and recorded several albums in the Afrikaans language. During 1963, he toured and featured in a South African film, Kimberley Jim. The film was released with a special prologue and epilogue in South African cinemas after Reeves' death, praising him as a true friend of the country. The film was produced, directed and written by Emil Nofal. Reeves was one of an exclusive trio of performers to have released an album there that played at the little-used 16⅔ rpm speed. This unusual format was more suited to the spoken word and was quickly discontinued for music. The only other artists known to have released such albums in South Africa were Elvis Presley and Slim Whitman.
Britain and Ireland
Reeves toured Britain and Ireland during 1963 between his tours of South Africa and Europe. Reeves and the Blue Boys were in Ireland from May 30 to June 19, 1963, with a tour of US military bases from June 10 to June 15, when they returned to Ireland. They performed in most counties in Ireland, though Reeves occasionally abbreviated performances because he was unhappy with the piano. In a June 6, 1963 interview with Spotlight magazine, Reeves expressed his concerns about the tour schedule and the condition of the pianos, but said he was pleased with the audiences.
There was a press reception for him at the Shannon Shamrock Inn organised by Tom Monaghan of Bunratty Castle. Show band singers Maisie McDaniel and Dermot O' Brien welcomed him on 29 May 1963. A photograph appeared in the Limerick Leader on 1 June 1963. Press coverage continued from May until Reeve's arrival with a photograph of the press reception in The Irish Press. Billboard magazine in the US also reported the tour before and after. The single "Welcome to My World" with the B/W side "Juanita" was released by the RCA company during June 1963 and bought by the distributors Irish Records Factors Ltd. This scored the record number one while Reeves was there during June.
There were a number of accounts of his dances in the local newspapers and a good account was given in The Kilkenny People of his dance in the Mayfair Ballroom where 1,700 persons were present. There was a photograph in The Donegal Democrat of Reeves singing in the Pavesi Ball Room on 7 June 1963, and an account of his non-appearance on stage in The Diamond, Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo in The Western People representing how the tour went in different areas.
He planned to record an album of popular Irish songs, and had three number one songs in Ireland during 1963 and 1964: "Welcome to My World", "I Love You Because", and "I Won't Forget You". Reeves had 11 songs in the Irish charts from 1962 to 1967. He recorded two Irish ballads, "Danny Boy" and "Maureen". "He'll Have to Go" was his most popular song there and was at number one and on the charts for months during 1960. He was one of the most popular recording artists in Ireland, in the first ten after the Beatles, Elvis and Cliff Richard.
He was permitted to perform in Ireland by the Irish Federation of Musicians on the condition that he share the bill with Irish show bands, becoming popular by 1963. The British Federation of Musicians would not permit him to perform there because no agreement existed for British show bands to travel to America in exchange for the Blue Boys playing in Britain. Reeves, however, performed for British radio and TV programs.
Reeves visited Njårdhallen, Oslo on April 16, 1964 with Bobby Bare, Chet Atkins, the Blue Boys and The Anita Kerr Singers. They performed two concerts; the second was televised and recorded by the Norwegian network (NRK - Norsk Rikskringkasting). The complete concert, however, was not recorded, including some of Reeves' last songs. There are reports he performed "You're the Only Good Thing (That's Happened to Me)" in this section. The program was re-run many times over the years.
His first success in Norway, "He'll Have to Go", scored No. 1 in the Top Ten and scored the chart for 29 weeks. "I Love You Because" was his greatest success in Norway, scoring No. 1 during 1964 and scoring on the list for 39 weeks. His albums spent 696 weeks in the Norwegian Top 20 chart, making him among the most popular music artists of the history of Norway.
Last recording session
Reeves' last recording session for RCA had produced "Make the World Go Away", "Missing You", and "Is It Really Over?" When the session ended with some time remaining on the schedule, Reeves suggested he record one more song. He taped "I Can't Stop Loving You", in what was to be his last RCA recording. He made one later recording, however, at the little studio in his home. During July 1964 Reeves recorded "I'm a Hit Again", using just an acoustic guitar as accompaniment. That recording was never released by RCA but appeared during 2003 as part of a collection of Reeves songs, after RCA had sold its rights to Reeves' recordings.
Fatal aircraft accident
On July 31, 1964, Reeves and his business partner and manager Dean Manuel (also the pianist of Reeves' backing group, the Blue Boys) left Batesville, Arkansas, en route to Nashville in a single-engine Beechcraft Debonair aircraft, with Reeves at the controls. The two had secured a deal on some real property (Reeves had also unsuccessfully tried to buy property from the LaGrone family in Deadwood, Texas, north of his birthplace of Galloway).
While flying over Brentwood, Tennessee, they encountered a violent thunderstorm. A subsequent investigation showed that the small airplane had become caught in the storm and Reeves suffered spatial disorientation. It was later believed he was flying the airplane upside down and assumed he was increasing altitude to clear the storm. The plane faded from radar screens at around 5:00 p.m. CDT and radio communication was ended. When the wreckage was found some 42 hours later, it was discovered the airplane's engine and nose were buried in the ground due to the impact of the crash. The crash site was in a wooded area north-northeast of Brentwood approximately at the junction of Baxter Lane and Franklin Pike Circle, just east of US Interstate 65, and southwest of Nashville International Airport where Reeves planned to land. Coincidentally, both Reeves and Randy Hughes, the pilot of Patsy Cline's ill-fated airplane, were trained by the same instructor.
On the morning of August 2, 1964, after an intense search by several parties (which included several personal friends of Reeves) the bodies of the singer and Dean Manuel were found in the wreckage of the aircraft and, at 1:00 p.m. local time, radio stations across the United States began to announce Reeves' death formally. Thousands of people traveled to pay their last respects at his funeral two days later. The coffin, draped in flowers from fans, was driven through the streets of Nashville and then to Reeves' final resting place near Carthage, Texas.

DRUG ABUSE

People who use drugs experience a wide array of physical effects other than those expected. The excitement of a cocaine effect, for instance, is followed by a "crash" : a period of anxiety, fatigue, depression, and an strong desire to use more cocaine to alleviate the feelings of the crash. Marijuana and alcohol interfere with motor control and are factors in many automobile accidents. Users of marijuana and hallucinogenic drugs may experience flashbacks, unwanted recurrences of the drug's effects weeks or months after use. Abrupt abstinence from certain drugs result in withdrawal symptoms.

For example, heroin withdrawal symptoms cause vomiting, muscle cramps, convulsions, and delirium. With the continued use of a physically addictive drug, tolerance develops; i.e., constantly increasing amounts of the drug are needed to duplicate the initial effect. Sharing hypodermic needles used to inject some drugs dramatically increases the risk of contracting AIDS and some types of hepatitis . In addition, increased sexual activity among drug users, both in prostitution and from the disinhibiting effect of some drugs, also puts them at a higher risk of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases . Because the purity and dosage of illegal drugs such as heroin are uncontrolled, Drug Overdose is a constant risk. There are over 10,000 deaths directly attributable to drug use in the United States every year; the substances most frequently involved are cocaine, heroin, and morphine, often combined with alcohol or other drugs. Many drug users engage in criminal activity, such as burglary and prostitution, to raise the money to buy drugs, and some drugs, especially alcohol, are associated with violent behavior.

Effects on the Family
The user's preoccupation with the substance, plus its effects on mood and performance, can lead to marital problems and poor work performance or dismissal. Drug use can disrupt family life and create destructive patterns of codependency, that is, the spouse or whole family, out of love or fear of consequences, inadvertently enables the user to continue using drugs by covering up, supplying money, or denying there is a problem. Pregnant drug users, because of the drugs themselves or poor self-care in general, bear a much higher rate of low birth-weight babies than the average. Many drugs (e.g., crack and heroin) cross the placental barrier, resulting in addicted babies who go through withdrawal soon after birth, and fetal alcohol syndrome can affect children of mothers who consume alcohol during pregnancy. Pregnant women who acquire the AIDS virus through intravenous drug use pass the virus to their infant.

Effects on Society
Drug Abuse affects society in many ways. In the workplace it is costly in terms of lost work time and inefficiency. Drug users are more likely than nonusers to have occupational accidents, endangering themselves and those around them. Over half of the highway deaths in the United States involve alcohol. Drug-related crime can disrupt neighborhoods due to violence among drug dealers, threats to residents, and the crimes of the addicts themselves. In some neighborhoods, younger children are recruited as lookouts and helpers because of the lighter sentences given to juvenile offenders, and guns have become commonplace among children and adolescents. The great majority of homeless people have either a drug or alcohol problem or a mental illness-many have all three.
The federal government budgeted $17.9 billion on drug control in 1999 for interdiction, prosecution, international law enforcement, prisons, treatment, prevention, and related items. In 1998, drug-related health care costs in the United States came to more than $9.9 billion.

GENDER INEQUALITY

Gender inequality refers to the obvious or hidden disparity between individuals due to gender. Gender is constructed both socially through social interactions as well as biologically through chromosomes, brain structure, and hormonal differences. Gender systems are often dichotomous and hierarchical; binary gender systems may reflect onto the inequalities that manifest in numerous dimensions of daily life. Gender inequality stems from distinctions, whether empirically grounded or socially constructed.

Income disparities linked to job stratification
Wage discrimination is the discrepancy of wages between two groups due to a bias towards or against a specific trait with all other characteristics of both groups being equivalent. In the case of gender inequality, wage discrimination exists between the male and female gender. Historically, gender inequality has favored men over similarly qualified women.
Income disparity between genders stems from processes that determine the quality of jobs and earnings associated with jobs. Earnings associated with jobs will cause income inequality to take form in the placement of individuals into particular jobs through individual qualifications or stereotypical norms. Placement of men or women into particular job categories can be supported through the human capital theories of qualifications of individuals or abilities associated with biological differences in men and women. Conversely, the placement of men or women into separate job categories is argued to be caused by social status groups who desire to keep their position through the placement of those in lower statuses to lower paying positions.
Human capital theories refer to the education, knowledge, training, experience, or skill of a person which makes them potentially valuable to an employer. This has historically been understood as a cause of the gendered wage gap but is no longer a predominant cause as women and men in certain occupations tend to have similar education levels or other credentials. Even when such characteristics of jobs and workers are controlled for, the presence of women within a certain occupation leads to lower wages. This earnings discrimination is considered to be a part of pollution theory. This theory suggests that jobs which are predominated by women offer lower wages than do jobs simply because of the presence of women within the occupation. As women enter an occupation, this reduces the amount of prestige associated with the job and men subsequently leave these occupations. The entering of women into specific occupations suggests that less competent workers have begun to be hired or that the occupation is becoming deskilled. Men are reluctant to enter female-dominated occupations because of this and similarly resist the entrance of women into male-dominated occupations.
The gendered income disparity can also be attributed in part to occupational segregation, where groups of people are distributed across occupations according to ascribed characteristics; in this case, gender. Occupational sex segregation can be understood to contain two components or dimensions; horizontal segregation and vertical segregation. With horizontal segregation, occupational sex segregation occurs as men and women are thought to possess different physical, emotional, and mental capabilities. These different capabilities make the genders vary in the types of jobs they are suited for. This can be specifically viewed with the gendered division between manual and non-manual labor. With vertical segregation, occupational sex segregation occurs as occupations are stratified according to the power, authority, income, and prestige associated with the occupation and women are excluded from holding such jobs.
As women entered the workforce in larger numbers since the 1960s, occupations have become segregated based on the amount femininity or masculinity presupposed to be associated with each occupation. Census data suggests that while some occupations have become more gender integrated (mail carriers, bartenders, bus drivers, and real estate agents), occupations including teachers, nurses, secretaries, and librarians have become female-dominated while occupations including architects, electrical engineers, and airplane pilots remain predominately male in composition. Based on the census data, women occupy the service sector jobs at higher rates then men. Women’s overrepresentation in service sector jobs as opposed to jobs that require managerial work acts as a reinforcement of women and men into traditional gender roles that causes gender inequality.
Once factors such as experience, education, occupation, and other job-relevant characteristics have been taken into account, 41% of the male-female wage gap remains unexplained. As such, considerations of occupational segregation and human capital theories are together not enough to understand the continued existence of a gendered income disparity.
The glass ceiling effect is also considered a possible contributor to the gender wage gap or income disparity. This effect suggests that gender provides significant disadvantages towards the top of job hierarchies which become worse as a person’s career goes on. The term glass ceiling implies that invisible or artificial barriers exist which prevent women from advancing within their jobs or receiving promotions. These barriers exist in spite of the achievements or qualifications of the women and still exist when other characteristics that are job-relevant such as experience, education, and abilities are controlled for. The inequality effects of the glass ceiling are more prevalent within higher-powered or higher income occupations, with fewer women holding these types of occupations. The glass ceiling effect also indicates the limited chances of women for income raises and promotion or advancement to more prestigious positions or jobs. As women are prevented by these artificial barriers from receiving job promotions or income raises, the effects of the inequality of the glass ceiling increase over the course of a woman’s career.
Statistical discrimination is also cited as a cause for income disparities and gendered inequality in the workplace. Statistical discrimination indicates the likelihood of employers to deny women access to certain occupational tracks because women are more likely than men to leave their job or the labor force when they become married or pregnant. Women are instead given positions that dead-end or jobs that have very little mobility. In Third World countries such as the Dominican Republic, female entrepreneurs are statistically more prone to failure in business. In the event of a business failure women often return to their domestic lifestyle despite the absence of income. On the other hand, men tend to search for other employment as the household is not a priority.
The gender earnings ratio suggests that there has been an increase in women’s earnings comparative to men. Men’s plateau in earnings began after the 1970s, allowing for the increase in women’s wages to close the ratio between incomes. Despite the smaller ratio between men and women’s wages, disparity still exists. Census data suggests that women’s earnings are 71 percent of men’s earnings in 1999.
The gendered wage gap varies in its width among different races. Whites comparatively have the greatest wage gap between the genders. With whites, women earn 78% of the wages that white men do. With African Americans, women earn 90% of the wages that African American men do. With people of Hispanic origin, women earn 88% of the wages that men of Hispanic origin do. There are some exceptions where women earn more than men: According to a survey on gender pay inequality by the International Trade Union Confederation, female workers in the Gulf state of Bahrain earn 40 per cent more than male workers.

Professional education and careers
The gender gap also appeared to narrow considerably beginning in the mid-1960s. Where some 5% of first-year students in professional programs were female in 1965, by 1985 this number had jumped to 40% in law and medicine, and over 30% in dentistry and business school. Before the highly effective birth control pill was available, women planning professional careers, which required a long-term, expensive commitment, had to "pay the penalty of abstinence or cope with considerable uncertainty regarding pregnancy." This control over their reproductive decisions allowed women to more easily make long-term decisions about their education and professional opportunities. Women are highly underrepresented on boards of directors and in senior positions in the private sector.
Additionally, with reliable birth control, young men and women had more reason to delay marriage. This meant that the marriage market available to any one women who "delay[ed] marriage to pursue a career...would not be as depleted. Thus the Pill could have influenced women's careers, college majors, professional degrees, and the age at marriage."
Customer preference studies
A 2009 study conducted by David R. Hekman and colleagues found that customers who viewed videos featuring a black male, a white female, or a white male actor playing the role of an employee helping a customer were 19 percent more satisfied with the white male employee's performance, suggesting customer bias as a reason why white men continue to earn 25 percent more than equally-well performing women and minorities. Forty five percent of the customers were women and 41 percent were non-white, indicating to the researchers that even women and minority customers prefer white men. In a second study, they found that white male doctors were rated as more approachable and competent than equally-well performing women or minority doctors. They interpret their findings to suggest that employers are willing to pay more for white male employees because employers are customer driven and customers are happier with white male employees. They also suggest that what is required to solve the problem of wage inequality is to change customer biases, not necessarily to pay women more.

EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING

This article is about the effects of global warming and climate change. The effects, or impacts, of climate change may be physical, ecological, social or economic. Evidence of observed climate change includes the instrumental temperature record, rising sea levels, and decreased snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere.[2] According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007a:10), "[most] of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in [human greenhouse gas] concentrations". It is predicted that future climate changes will include further global warming (i.e., an upward trend in global mean temperature), sea level rise, and a probable increase in the frequency of some extreme weather events. Signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have agreed to implement policies designed to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.
Temperature changes
This article breaks down some of the impacts of climate change according to different levels of future global warming. This way of describing impacts has, for instance, been used in the IPCC's Assessment Reports on climate change. The instrumental temperature record shows global warming of around 0.6 ºC over the entire 20th century. The future level of global warming is uncertain, but a wide range of estimates (projections) have been made. The IPCC's "SRES" scenarios have been frequently used to make projections of future climate change. Climate models using the six SRES "marker" scenarios suggest future warming of 1.1 to 6.4 ºC by the end of the 21st century (above average global temperatures over the 1980 to 1999 time period). The range in temperature projections partly reflects different projections of future social and economic development (e.g., economic growth, population level), which in turn affects projections of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The range also reflects uncertainty in the response of the climate system to past and future GHG emissions (measured by the climate sensitivity).
The projected rate of warming under these scenarios would very likely be without precedent during at least the last 10,000 years (see footnote 1).[9] The most recent warm period comparable to these projections was the Mid-Pliocene, around 3 million years ago. At that time, models suggest that mean global temperatures were about 2 to 3 ºC warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.
Physical impacts
Working Group I's contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007, concluded that warming of the climate system was "unequivocal." This was based on the consistency of evidence across a range of observed changes, including increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. The report of IPCC Working Group II pointed to substantial evidence of physical and biological systems having been affected by regional changes in climate.
Human activities have contributed to a number of the observed changes in climate. This contribution has principally been through the burning of fossil fuels, which has led to an increase in the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere. This increase in GHG concentrations has caused a "forcing" of the climate in the direction of warming. Human-induced forcing of the climate has likely to contributed to a number of observed changes, including sea level rise, changes in climate extremes (such as warm and cold days), declines in Arctic sea ice extent, and to glacier retreat.
Human-induced warming could potentially lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible. The probability of warming having unforeseen consequences increases with the rate, magnitude, and duration of climate change. With medium confidence (see footnote 2), IPCC (2007b:17) concluded that with a global average temperature increase of 1–4 °C, (relative to 1990–2000) partial deglaciation of the Greenland ice sheet would occur over a period of centuries to millennia. Including the possible contribution of partial deglaciation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, sea level would rise by 4–6 metres or more.
Effects on weather
Changes have been observed in the amount, intensity, frequency, and type of precipitation. Widespread increases in heavy precipitation have occurred, even in places where total rain amounts have decreased. IPCC (2007d) concluded that human influences had, more likely than not (greater than 50% probability, based on expert judgement), contributed to an increase in the frequency of heavy precipitation events. Projections of future changes in precipitation show overall increases in the global average, but with substantial shifts in where and how precipitation falls.
Evidence suggests that since the 1970s, there have been substantial increases in the intensity and duration of tropical storms and hurricanes. Models project a general tendency for more intense but fewer storms outside the tropics. Since the late 20th century, changes have been observed in the trends of some extreme weather and climate events, e.g., heat waves. Human activities have, with varying degrees of confidence, contributed to some of these observed trends. Projections for the 21st century suggest continuing changes in trends for some extreme events. Solomon et al. (2007), for example, projected the following likely (greater than 66% probability, based on expert judgement) changes:
• an increase in the areas affected by drought;
• increased tropical cyclone activity;
• and increased incidence of extreme high sea level (excluding tsunamis)
Projected changes in extreme events will have predominantly adverse impacts on ecosystems and human society.
Local climate change
Regional effects of global warming vary in nature. Some are the result of a generalised global change, such as rising temperature, resulting in local effects, such as melting ice. In other cases, a change may be related to a change in a particular ocean current or weather system. In such cases, the regional effect may be disproportionate and will not necessarily follow the global trend.
There are three major ways in which global warming will make changes to regional climate: melting or forming ice, changing the hydrological cycle (of evaporation and precipitation) and changing currents in the oceans and air flows in the atmosphere. The coast can also be considered a region, and will suffer severe impacts from sea level rise.
The human influence on the climate can be seen in the geographical pattern of observed warming, with greater temperature increases over land and in polar regions rather than over the oceans. Using models, it is possible to identify the human "signal" of global warming over both land and ocean areas.
Projections of future climate changes at the regional scale do not hold as high a level of scientific confidence as projections made at the global scale. It is, however, expected that future warming will follow a similar geographical pattern to that seen already, with greatest warming over land and high northern latitudes, and least over the Southern Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic Ocean.
Biogeochemical cycles
Climate change may have an effect on the carbon cycle in an interactive "feedback" process . A feedback exists where an initial process triggers changes in a second process that in turn influences the initial process. A positive feedback intensifies the original process, and a negative feedback reduces it (IPCC, 2007d:78). Models suggest that the interaction of the climate system and the carbon cycle is one where the feedback effect is positive (Schneider et al.., 2007:792).
Using the A2 SRES emissions scenario, Schneider et al.. (2007:789) found that this effect led to additional warming by 2100, relative to the 1990-2000 period, of 0.1 to 1.5 °C. This estimate was made with high confidence. The climate projections made in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report of 1.1 to 6.4 °C account for this feedback effect. On the other hand, with medium confidence, Schneider et al.. (2007) commented that additional releases of GHGs were possible from permafrost, peat lands, wetlands, and large stores of marine hydrates at high latitudes.

CORRUPTION AND ITS IMPACT ON THE POOR.

The impact of corruption on the poor and on poverty reduction processes has now been reasonably widely discussed. The effect of corruption on the poor can be gauged through both its direct impact (through, for example, increasing the cost of public services, lowering their quality and often all together restricting poor people's access to such essential services as water, health and education) and the indirect impact (through, for example, diverting public resources away from social sectors and the poor, and through limiting development, growth and poverty reduction). While this impacts negatively on most of the segments of the society, it is suggested that the poor are more vulnerable both in terms of being easy targets for being subjected to extortion, bribery, double-standards and intimidation as well as in terms of being hit by the negative and harsh consequences of corruption on country's overall development processes. So, in addition to the negative impact of corruption, there is also an element of disproportionality and inequality. The following short examples (drawing on research, studies and diagnostic tools) are set to demonstrate some of the negative and disproportionate impact of corruption on the poor.

Corruption affects income inequality and poverty
As well as affecting economic efficiency corruption can also have distributional consequences. This affects income inequality and poverty by reducing economic growth, the progressivity of the tax system, the level and effectiveness of social programs, and by perpetuating an unequal distribution of asset ownership and unequal access to education. These findings, based on various empirical analysis, hold for countries with varying growth experiences, at different stages of development, and using various indices of corruption (used to compare the correlation of corruption with real per capita GDP, Gini coefficient and quintile income shares, etc). In a cross-section of 37 countries, a significant impact of corruption on inequality was found, while taking into account various other exogenous variables. When controlling for GDP per head, this impact remains significant at a 10 % level. It was concluded that a deterioration in a country's corruption index of 2.5 points on a scale of 0 to 10 is associated with the same increase in the Gini coefficient as a reduction in average secondary schooling of 2.3 years. Researchers have also tested various instrumental variables to ascertain whether the relationship between corruption and inequality is not a case of reverse causality.

Corruption is a core poverty issue as viewed by the poor themselves
Corruption emerges as a core poverty issue as a result of the participatory poverty assessments carried out within the framework of World Bank's Voices of the Poor initiative that brings together experiences of over 60,000 poor men and women around the world. Poor people engaged in the study reported hundreds of incidents of corruption as they attempt to seek health care, educate their children, claim social assistance, get paid, attempt to access justice or police protection, and seek to enter the marketplace.