Sociological studies

The qualitative study is focused on the issue of equal access of women (and men) into managerial and decision-making positions in a social enterprise and conventional one in the Czech Republic. The results of the study reflect a lack of focus on gender equality, low sensitivity to gender based discrimination, recurrence of gender stereotypes and the lack of internal policies (formal procedures) to promote women in leadership positions in the surveyed firms.

In this volume of Sociological Studies, readers are presented with the results of a number of studies that examined the participation of citizens in the decision-making process at the local level and in the partnership between public administration (the municipal authorities) and NGOs or even businesses.

The Czech political system is construed as a parliamentary democracy with a bicameral Parliament; the Parliament’s role is key even with regard to its role in creating other political institutions. The presented study deals successively with the legislative process, the role of political parties in the system of representation, the relationship between parliament and government, characteristics of deputies. The last chapter analyses the role of deputies and its perception by deputies.

The book examines elections to the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic during all its previous existence. The main objective is to analyze the impact of majority electoral system and specifics of the candidates´ support in elections. This also book focuses on electoral success and representation of individual parties. Then we look at long-term record low turnout.

This publication presents a quantitative look at the issue of gender segregation – a statistical image – and a qualitative image of the social reality of women’s labour as portrayed in contemporary Czech television serials. The analysis showed that the Czech labour market continues to be and has long been heavily segregated and the degree of segregation is only decreasing very slowly.

The first Senate elections raised the question of the purpose of electing a representative body, whose existence have not been clearly explained or defended by its creators. The most common reason voters had for not participating in the 1996 Senate elections was their disagreement with the very its existence. These elections were the first experience with the two-round majority system.

The objective of the study is to describe two factors that have a significant impact on regional development. One is the level of civil society development and the other is a nature of social network of local development actors. The focus of this study is Orlicko in the Pardubice region. Indicators of political and civic participation, and partnership between sectors are examined on the basis of publicly available sources.

The monograph deals with stratification by means of interaction distances: analyses of Bogardus scale for occupational categories / friendship patterns and in-depth interviews. We pursue 1. homophily (like-me) hypothesis, 2. existence of subjective social class boundaries, 3. images of occupations and the society; and using qualitative analysis 4. the perception of social classes and 5. how people distinguish and distance themselves from or identify with these categories/classes.

This study explores political awareness of Czech citizens from the point of view of both its distribution within the society, its dimensionality and sources, and its effect on political attitudes and their constraints. The study shows that Czech citizens know most about local and national politics and political players, and are least informed about international affairs.

This study looks at the problem of work-life balance at the employee level and at the mechanisms for negotiating policies for working parents directly at the workplace. The research was based on three case studies of engineering companies, comparing the parent companies in Germany, France, and Sweden with their branches in the Czech Republic.

The study therefore aims to answer the question of whether in families where the father is involved in caring for children in the early stage of their lives there is an erosion of gender inequalities in the family, or whether what occurs is just a modification of the given status quo.

The study provides systematic overview of the policy tools that are used in various countries to encourage return of scientist and researchers working abroad back to their home country or at least to facilitate the transfer of information, know-how and experience from host countries. The overview of policy tools is supplemented by an attempt to quantify potential target group for such policy – the scientists and researchers of the Czech origin working in abroad.

The study traces the development of Czech sociology to 1948, broken down into several periods: the period during which sociology established itself as an independent academic discipline (G. A. Lindner, T. G. Masaryk, the Catholic sociologists), the period of Masaryk’s students, who while they established departments of sociology only partly engaged in empirical sociology (I. A. Bláha, E. Chalupný, J.

The project The Adjustment of the Czech Labour Force: Changing Job Structures, Wage Disparities and Work Orientations aimed to use various data sources to describe changes in the field in the last decade. Studies on various topics are collected to provide a multidimensional picture of the changing Czech labour force and its "state of mind", together with identification of some key problems.

Based on expert interviews conducted in autumn 2004 we discuss in this publication processes which are currently shaping science and research – the emphasis on economic aspects of knowledge production and commercialization of research results; efforts to preserve the traditional perceptions of science as a sphere of its own controlled only by research communities; the functioning of journalists as mere translators of science to society but not as a critical voice translating or presenting or

This study examines whether and in what way parenthood and childlessness are reflected in the gender-specific media targeting men and women in Czech society. The study presents the results of a qualitative and a quantitative analysis of selected women’s magazines and a qualitative study of selected men’s lifestyle magazines published in the Czech Republic after 1989, that is, during a period when important changes in reproductive behaviour have been under way in the population.

This study describes the socio-demographic structure of the membership base of the Christian Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People’s Party (KDU-ČSL) and the party’s voters. It is based on a questionnaire survey carried out among the party’s membership base in the middle of 2005. Only part of the survey’s results is used in this study. The membership base is examined according to when member-respondents joined the party and where they reside – Bohemia or Moravia.

This study reports on the results of the study “The Image of Science in Czech Public Opinion”, which was conducted by the Public Opinion Research Centre at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in February 2006 as a part of “Our Society”, a continuous public opinion research project.

The study focuses on minority ethnic groups and populations that have become a recognisable presence in the Czech Republic: Slovaks, Ukrainians, Vietnamese, and Roma. The main objective of the study is to map the situation of these communities or populations in the Czech Republic.

The study examines the phenomenon of voluntary and involuntary childlessness, focusing in particular on its occurrence in Czech society.

This study examines two processes that public administration went through at the local level beginning in the early 1990s: a process whereby municpalities were broken up into autonomous units, and a process whereby these autonomous municipalities voluntarily came together to form cooperative groups or unions of municipalities.

The presented study deals with the political consequences of the suburbanization process in the four largest metropolitan areas in the Czech Republic after 1989. The aggregate socio-economic data on the level of municipalities are used first for the creation of typology of suburban communes. Then the electoral turnout in suburban municipalities is studied in relations to their socio-economic, cultural and geographical features.

The new labour market model that evolved in the Czech Republic after 1989 and the family strategies
of women and men are two spheres that interact and overlap at various levels of society and in the
individual strategies of those involved. The changes to the circumstances surrounding labour market
participation that resulted from the economic, political and cultural changes in Czech society and

Text studies life satisfaction and happiness of Czech men and women. It works with ISSP 2002 data. Basic socio-demographic factors are analyzed (sex, age, education, marital status and cohabitation). Satisfaction with family life and satisfaction with work is also included in the analyses. Married people are happier than others. Satisfaction with family life affects happiness more strongly than satisfaction with work.

Study is based on the sociology of family, the sociology of work and the sociology of organisation and management, combining these fields from the perspective of the sociology of gender.

The objective of this volume of studies is to attain a deeper understanding of the processes behind the formation of group mentalities in the Czech Republic after 1989. This involves identifying the group stereotypes in thought and behaviour that take shape among these groups owing to the growing differentiation of life experiences.

This study analyses the reasons behind the low electoral participation and behind voter mobility, and looks at the consequences these changes hold for the electoral gains of individual parties. Using data for the Czech Republic the author indicates some socio-demographic factors and some political attitudes that can be linked to electoral participation and highlights some of the factors that cause voters to participate less in elections.

This study is based on the first stage of research on political change in metropolitan areas in the Czech Republic, conducted within the framework of the International Metropolitan Observatory Project (IMO). In the first part of the study the authors examine how metropolitan areas are defined.

This volume offers a summary of the most important knowledge in the field of contemporary
qualitative sociology of religion in the Czech Republic, and it describes the state of religiosity/spirituality
in the country after 1989 up to the present in a European context. The majority of Czech sociologists
of religion, based at various academic institutions, contributed to the preparation of the volume.

Study deals with relationship between marriage, cohabitation and education. The first part presents a summary of the sociological theories. The second part verifies hypotheses based on these theories with ISSP 2002 data. The connection between education and entry into marriage canbe fully explained by longer school attendance. More educated people study longer.

The sociological study is a qualitative analysis of life conditions and strategies of women in mangerial positions based on a case study of a group of managers at one workplace. the subject of study was the study of strategies aimend at harmonising work and family responsibilities and the values related to these two spheres expressed by these women.
 

The theoretical part of the study explains basic approaches from the field of housing careers. The analytic part of the study is based on an observation of the personal housing histories, in the period between 1960 and 2001, of Czech citizens, who were respondents in the Housing Attitudes in the Czech Republic 2001 survey.

The main objective of the work is to answer the question of how Czech MPs and PPGs make
decisions. Thus main concerns of the authors are issues of PPG unity, the adopted mechanisms
of internal control and negotiation and, primarily, the factors that influence, structure
and restrict the behaviour of individual MPs and PPGs. The work focuses on the 3rd electoral
term of the Chamber of Deputies (1998–2002); in some cases a comparison with previous

Childbirth, its risks and management of labor are viewed through the social constructivist lens. Manners in which differing childbirth management practices are negotiated are analyzed based on quantitative and qualitative data.

Wage and income surveys covering the period 1989-1999 are used to display inequality of earnings and main factors of disparities. Increasing differences in the Czech Republic and the decreasing weight of demographic characteristics in wage structure are observed. Introduction of a market economy has led to earnings disparities more similar to those in the West.

The paper provides brief list of changes in rental and ownership housingsector during the transition in the Czech Republic. The complete analysisof housing expenditures of all Czech households as well as analysis of housingexpenditures of different social categories of households is provided.

The paper is based on an empirical survey of religion and religious valuesin the society. It analyses a religious orientation, church attendance,values closely connected with Christianity and a proportion of people whodeclare any religious affiliation. The study pays attention to the religiousrevival in the end of the 20th century and poins out different types of religiosity (occultism, evangelicalism) and their spread in modern societies.

The main topic of this study is the research of perception of social and generally any active role of 
the state in attitudes of the Czech adult population. The role of the state is analyzed in context of 
political thinking of respondents. The importance of the traditional dichotomy between liberal and 
conservative politics is stressed, primary attention being paid to conservatism. Theoretical reflection