Resources for Feminist Research: Call for manuscripts for a Special Issue

The following was sent to me recently by one of our faculty members:

Resources for Feminist Research

Call for manuscripts for a Special Issue Healthy Environments for Women Teachers and Faculty

Deadline for Submission: December 31, 2007

How healthy are Canadian schools and universities? What are the characteristics of a healthy or unhealthy educational setting? How healthy are the women who work in these settings? What initiatives would support a healthy physical and social environment for women teachers and faculty?

Historically, empirical studies of occupational health focused on the incidence of illness, injury, absenteeism, and disability. By contrast, a population health approach examines the social, environmental and biophysical factors that support health. Gender, culture, income and social status, social support networks, working conditions, physical environment and other interrelated factors influence the health of individuals and populations. From this perspective, teacher health is not simply a clinical descriptor or the absence of disease. Rather, the health of individual teachers and teachers as a group is an essential social resource. Safeguarding and promoting teacher and faculty health and wellbeing can be achieved by creating and sustaining healthy educational environments.

This special issue will explore the health of women teachers and faculty and the educational environments where they work. Invited are articles that explore the complex and varied experiences of women teachers and faculty, the factors that nurture and support their safety, and physical and mental health and well-being, and the processes, interventions, and institutional structures that create and strengthen healthy environments for women teachers and faculty.

Diana L. Gustafson and Roberta F. Hammett are the guest editors of this special issue of the Resources for Feminist Research. We invite submissions of original manuscripts that explore broader theoretical questions as well as those that report on innovative research studies and policy-oriented issues on a range of topics such as:

• Social well-being in rural, northern and isolated community schools
• Homophobia and chilly classroom climates
• The healthy communities movement in the educational context
• Healthy or health-related institutional policies and initiatives
• Promotion and tenure anxiety among visible minority women
• Women teachers' mental health issues
• The production and mediation of women faculty's occupational stress
• The control and surveillance of women's bodies in schools and universities
• Safety and risk for women working in unsafe physical spaces
• Women teachers' perspectives on health hazards
• Incentive programs for teachers' healthy lifestyle choices

Manuscripts may be submitted by e-mail to RFR. Manuscripts should conform to RFR's editorial policy as described at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/ <http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/%3E Contributions must be original research or scholarly articles approximately 6,500-7,500 words, in English or French with a short abstract (75 words) which will be translated into the other official language. Submissions should be double-spaced. All manuscripts are reviewed anonymously by at least three qualified readers. Please address questions about this special issue to:

Diana L. Gustafson, Associate Professor of Social Sciences and HealthDivision of Community Health and HumanitiesFaculty of Medicine, HSC 2834Memorial UniversitySt. John's, NL A1B 3V6 diana.gustafson@med.mun.ca.