Females and males had equal but complementary roles in traditional Aboriginal life Essay Example for Free

Females and males had equal but complementary roles in traditional Aboriginal life Essay The purpose of this report is to show that women and men shared many roles in Traditional Australian Aboriginal life. It is acknowledged that men and women were given equal and complementary roles when it came to ceremonies, hunting and gathering, raising and initiating the children, building shelter and throughout the leadership hierarchy. This is proved through evidence collected and presented in the following paragraphs. The roles of both men and women were important and neither was thought to be as more significant than the other. While men had certain roles and women had other roles, they complemented each other which made day to day life easier and more bearable for the group. There were many different types of ceremonies performed by the Australian Aboriginals. Some ceremonies performed were initiation ceremonies, funeral ceremonies, cleansing ceremonies and ceremonies to great other tribes or groups of Australian aboriginals onto their land. During initiation ceremonies, young boys and girls begin the journey to become a man or woman. They are often taken away from the group and left in the bush to be shown and taught by the elders. The elders will pass on the laws relating to their country, spiritual belief and the role and obligations they have within the tribe. [1] This ceremony is performed by both men and women and each role they play complements the other. While men look after the young boys and women look after the young girls, without their roles complementing each other, neither group would be able to co-exist. In funeral ceremonies, both men and women elders would smoke out a house where a person may have died. This is to rid their community of the potential of the deceased’s bad spirits coming back. They also find the last place the deceased person was and smoke it for the same reason. [2] During this ceremony, they would often cut open their own flesh to show their pain and sorrow because one of them had passed. They sung and danced to ensure the deceased’s spirit had left to return to its birth place where it was to be reborn into the world. [3]Without both the men and women complementing each other throughout this ceremony, they would not be able to be performed. Aboriginal people believe that when a person dies, their spirit goes back to the Dreaming Ancestors in the land. This is only possible if certain ceremonies and rituals are performed. They used dances and special songs in times of death or mourning periods. It is also thought that when a person dies they are one with the land again, so often, the aboriginal group will vacate the area that a group member died. It is unsure whether this is out of respect or out of fear that the spirit will return and haunt them. They will return to the place sometime within a year and bury the bones of their dead group member. All other ceremonies that are performed by the Australian Aboriginals were able to be performed by both male and female members of the group. Some also include other groups or tribes. It is known that the Australian Aboriginals were avid hunters. They had a very deep knowledge of their land and believe they were born of it. They also had great knowledge of water sources and seasonal changes which affect the type of food readily available to them. They were knowledgeable about certain foods which were poisonous to them and knew when and how to avoid them should they ever come across these foods. Both males and females made different but complementary contributions when it came to hunting and gathering. The roles of both men and women were complementary in that they worked together to gather food to prepare a meal. Women gathered things such as vegetables, eggs, honey, roots, fruit, and small reptiles such as snakes and goannas. Mostly, the men hunted larger animals such as emus and kangaroos as well as birds. [4] The preparing of such foods was done by both the men and women. It is believed that women were the main carers of young children in traditional Australian Aboriginal society. However, during initiation, the men took over the role of caring for the young boy so they could be taught the laws of the land. When a young boy was roughly six years of age, he would go and join the male adults to learn about hunting and food gathering while the young girls would remain with the women to learn about different things such as child bearing, child rearing and food gathering [5] Because of a combination of nomadic lifestyle and the regions sunny climate, aboriginal people believed there was no need to build shelters or dwellings. The shelter that was used in permanent camps consisted in a frame made from saplings, or straight branches, covered with materials that were available locally such as leafy branches or sheets of bark. In some areas the covering of the shelter was sheets of soft paperbark, which were pulled down from trees. In other areas they used bushes and leafy branches instead because the bark was not available. Australia has such a mild climate, most of the time, they would sleep in the open, and warmth was often provided by a fire or two. They would sometimes be accompanied by a dingo or camp dog, which would also provide warmth to the man or women who it slept beside. During the wetter and colder seasons, they sometimes used closed dome-shaped shelters which were made with a frame of different sized sticks bent over, which joined in the middle to make the dome shape. They were not very big, standing between one and two metres tall. The frame for these was covered with whatever materials that could be found locally such as sheets of bark, layers of soft grass and leaves. [6] Both men and women would collect and assemble the shelters used as well as the campfire. Sometimes they had daytime fires which needed protection from the wind, so they used bushes and branches as a windbreak. Women would gather the leafy branches and bark that is needed to make the roof while the men would gather the saplings and/or the straight branches used to make the frame. Another form of shelter used when available was small or shallow caves that were often hidden behind rocks or bushes. These provided natural shelter for the nomadic Australian Aboriginals. [7] Both men and women had various roles when it comes to leadership in the Aboriginal culture. Both genders would contribute in leading ceremonies, tribal or group meetings and hunting parties. Although it is often shown that men have the main role of being an elder, women also were elders. Elders were leaders of the group who shared knowledge of the laws surrounding the land and how each member of the group intertwines with another. Elders are valuable members of each aboriginal tribe or group as they bring the wealth of knowledge and pass it down generation to generation. While male elders bring knowledge of hunting bigger animals, laws of the land and initiation, female elders bring knowledge of child irth, food gathering and child rearing. The knowledge used by both male and female members of the group helps them to become one with the land. In conclusion, in Traditional Australian Aboriginal life men and women were proven to share roles and complement each other through various ways. Through raising children, hunting and gathering, ceremonies and in leadership they comple ment each others roles so that the tribe or group can exist harmoniously. While men seem to have the main role throughout the Australian Aboriginal culture, it has now been proven that without the complementary role of women, the group would not continue to coexist.

The Effect of Employee Assistance Programs At the Workplace Essay

The Effect of Employee Assistance Programs At the Workplace Throughout the business world, one of the largest problems individual businesses face is the use of illegal drugs and alcohol. These substances greatly affect the business and workplace environments for many individuals. Employee assistance programs were created to help deal with augmenting substance abuse problems. Employee assistance programs enable a companies and its workers to detect if a co-worker is having problems and aids in helping them to overcome their problems by giving them advice or suggesting counseling. Critics have noticed some problems with this program. One problem is the lack of confidentiality and the fact that co-workers and bosses are afraid to confront their workers. In order for companies to minimize their loss of money, and for employees to stop ruining their lives and the lives around them, the employee assistance program is a necessity. Appropriate prevention and intervention efforts with employee assistance programs will save companies from losing experienced employees, and save employees from failure and even death. The most tremendous problems that companies are facing in the Nineties are the abuse of drugs and alcohol. Alcoholism is defined as a chronic, progressive, and fatal disease. The American Medical Association has recognized alcoholism as a disease since 1956 (Scanlon 9). An alcoholic is identified as having a severe dependency, or addiction, and a cumulative pattern of behaviors associated with drinking. Alcoholism is apparent when someone is frequently drunk, having marriage problems, driving while intoxicated, getting fired, or being arrested (Drug Abuse). A significant difference between being an alcoholic and a drug addict is that drugs, no matter what the age of the user, are illegal. Drug abuse is defined as the use of a drug for a purpose other than for its possible intended medical purpose, which causes a person to be impaired physically, emotionally, and socially. In both cases people use these substances as a way to escape from their problems, and as a way of postponing upcoming problems in their lives (Scanlon 10). Substance abuse is the misuse of any substance leading to a loss of control over mind and body. Employee assistance programs were founded in 1971, and they: â€Å"Have been working to develop and main... ...Tyrone. â€Å"The Quick Fix.† The Seattle Times 22 Dec. 1997: C1. Cooper, Lynn M. â€Å"Work Stress and Alcohol Effects.† Journal of Health and Social Behavior Sept. 1990, 260-263. Dickman, Fred ed. Employee Assistance Programs. Springfield Illinois: Charles Thomas, 1988. â€Å"Drug Abuse Self Assessment Survey.† 23 April 1999. Gerhart, Clifford. â€Å"Fighting Substance Abuse on the Job.† Alaska Business Monthly Aug. 1996:46-50. Goldberg, Carol. â€Å"High Price of Addiction.† LI Business News April 1998:1. Hartwell, Tyler D. â€Å"Workplace Alcohol-Testing Programs.† Monthly Labor Review June 1998:27-28. King, Phyllis A. â€Å"Alcohol in the Workplace.† Supervision 59 (1998): 16-18. Maynard, Roberta. â€Å"Handling Drug Problem on the Front Line.† Nation’s Business Aug. 1997: 11. Miller, Andy. â€Å"Employee Assistance Programs.† The Atlanta Journal and Constitution 30 Aug. 1998: 7. Scanlon, Walter F. Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in the Workplace. New York: Praeger, 1986. â€Å"Substance Abuse in the Workplace.† 23 April 1998. â€Å"Substances in the Workplace.† HR Focus Feb. 1997:1-3. â€Å"The Economic Costs of Alcohol and Drug Abuse in the United States.† National Institute on Drug and Alcohol Abuse. 23 April 1999.

Recommended procedures for improvement Essay

As systems turn out to be more programmed and mechanized, those in charge of information system have a tendency to consider that more power will construct their processes better organized. In pulling manufacturing and design en route for computerization, the inclination is to provide as much power as probable to the mechanism and leave the lingering job tasks at hand. This automation viewpoint reduces the information and perceptive capacities of workers and pushes them to dislike the technology. Premises in the field of information system management are significant whether one’s orientation is in the direction of research or practice (Tapscott, 3). The responsibility of an organization is to help out in withdrawing the complication of the world and explaining and predicting proceedings. Given the information that the purpose of information system management management is to lessen the convolution of the empirical world by means of technology can benefit from sound improvement. While the complexity of the information system plan will vary based on the size of the district, it has to include a mission statement and rational, quantifiable goals and objectives that can be attained, in most cases, with obtainable resources. The Alachua’s budget also has to reflect the financial obligation to major technology initiatives included in the plan. Additionally, the planning process must include proceedings that allow decision makers to gauge the benefits of investments in information system and abandon or alter failed strategies for more triumphant ones. Methods of making a Web site secure from hackers – It is not that software has turned out to be less protected, and it’s not almost certainly because of potential attackers having increased in number. The reason that hackers are more common is likely because many people do not know how to protect their Web sites. To make a website free from hackers, simply: (1) know your enemy, (2) create ‘strong’ passwords, (3) use good software, (4) update recurrently, (5) use a hardware server-side firewall and (6) facilitate WPA or WEP encryption on wireless network connections. Digital Signature – Digital signatures are just like written signatures – these are used to provide verification of the related input, typically called a ‘message’ – (may be anything) a message sent in a more complicated cryptographic protocol or from an electronic mail to a contract. In cryptography, a digital signature or is a kind of asymmetric cryptography used to reproduce the security properties of a signature in digital – than in a written form. Digital signatures usually give two algorithms – one for signing that involves a user’s secret (private key), and one for validating signatures that involves user’s public key and the output of the signature method is known as the digital signature. â€Å"Terms and Conditions† or â€Å"Conditions of Use† -Websites and its related services are administered by the Terms and Conditions of Use, and the constant access to websites and its services is put through the user’s agreement to be bound by the Terms and Conditions of Use, as they may alter occasionally. Terms and Conditions of Use is a provision placed on a website notifying users regarding how the website deals with a user’s rights and responsibilities. Some websites characterize their Terms and Conditions of Use allowing users to routinely assess its services offered. If a user does not agree to Terms and Conditions of Use, a user may not use the website or its services. Plans of Alachua County in information system must state who is responsible for implementing and updating the technology plan. The Alachua County District’s technology plan must includes information on individual needs, equitable resource allocation, cost-effective acquisitions, technology funding, infrastructure and networking issues, technology-related professional development, support needs, and information management and delivery. On the other hand, the district’s does not make use of this best practice for the reason that the plan is not complete, is not based on a valid needs assessment, and is not evaluated and updated in a scheduled manner. The constituency should guarantee that the goals listed in the plan are detailed, quantifiable, manageable, rational, and time-bounded. The county also should ensure that the plan is monitored and updated based on valid data related to the district’s technology needs, skills, usage, and fluency levels among district employees. Strategies in the county’s strategic plan relate to technology and are considered the goals for the technology plan. In the district technology plan, the objectives are ambiguous (e. g. : guarantee, renovate, generate, etc.). Few of the objectives are assessable and are not based on detailed standards, making it complicated to document whether the objective was acquired. Additionally, it is imperative to note down that all decision-making in information system management is derived from some embedded premise. For the reason that the consequences by means of vague assumption information system management are better for all – assumptions that give understanding may perhaps have even greater importance to all organizations (Tenkasi, 27). If one relies barely on the capability to forecast events devoid of understanding them, there is a greater prospective for making underprivileged, or at least unproductive decisions. The recommendations given are good examples of research that has hardened models of managing information systems in local areas and even in worldwide perspective. Yet there is still a need for more investigations to be able to accomplish a more constructive course of action in business information technology management. Information technology systems and management necessitate of a solid abstract establishment to direct both practice and research. Even though many of the recommendations being proposed by scholars and scientists in this field may possibly be compelling prescriptions for those who are on the lookout for something further than unsystematic information management, unless information management turns out to be strongly stranded in theories of organization. Works Cited: Tapscott, D. (1998) Growing Up Digital:The Rise of the Net Generation. McGraw Hill. Tenkasi, RV (1995) Technology transfer as collaborative learning. NY: Free Press Wesier, P. J. (2003). The Internet, Innovation, and Intellectual Property Policy. 103 Colum. L. Rev 534.

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