Notwithstanding the growing numbers of women entering the professions and considerable public debate concerned with equal opportunity and barriers to women's advancement, attempts to theorise the relation between gender and profession within the discipline of sociology remain relatively rare. This paper draws on recent work on the gendering of organisation and bureaucracy to suggest that a key issue for consideration is not so much the exclusion of women from work defined as professional, but rather their routine inclusion in ill-defined support roles. This adjunct work of women, it is argued, facilitates the `fleeting encounter' of professional practice, thereby resting on, and celebrating, a specific historical and cultural construction of masculinity and a masculinist vision of professional work. In an era where professions are under unprecedented public scrutiny, sociological attention to their renewal needs to recognise that a key feature of profession, as presently defined, is that it professes gender.

BackgroundThere is evidence that graduates of different medical schools vary in their preparedness for their first post. In 2003 Goldacre et al. reported that over 40% of UK medical graduates did not feel prepared and found large differences between graduates of different schools. A follow-up survey showed that levels of preparedness had increased yet there was still wide variation. This study aimed to examine whether medical graduates from three diverse UK medical schools were prepared for practice.MethodsThis was a qualitative study using a constructivist grounded theory approach. Prospective and cross-sectional data were collected from the three medical schools.A sample of 60 medical graduates (20 from each school) was targeted. They were interviewed three times: at the end of medical school (n = 65) and after four (n = 55) and 12 months (n = 46) as a Year 1 Foundation Programme doctor. Triangulated data were collected from clinicians via interviews across the three sites (n = 92). In addition three focus groups were conducted with senior clinicians who assess learning portfolios. The focus was on identifying areas of preparedness for practice and any areas of lack of preparedness.ResultsAlthough selected for being diverse, we did not find substantial differences between the schools. The same themes were identified at each site. Junior doctors felt prepared in terms of communication skills, clinical and practical skills and team working. They felt less prepared for areas of practice that are based on experiential learning in clinical practice: ward work, being on call, management of acute clinical situations, prescribing, clinical prioritisation and time management and dealing with paperwork.ConclusionsOur data highlighted the importance of students learning on the job, having a role in the team in supervised practice to enable them to learn about the duties and responsibilities of a new doctor in advance of starting work.

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The last decades have seen a major shift in the planning and development of ecosystem and landscape management in Europe. First of all, in line with international developments, the life-support-services of ecosystems have come to the fore through the application of the concept of ‘ecosystem services’. Secondly, drawing on the principles of landscape ecology linkages between ecosystems are being stressed through the concept of ‘ecological networks’. Thirdly there is increasing recognition of the beneficial relationship between access to green space and improved public ‘health and well-being’. These services and relationships are being linked together in both academic literature and policy practice in what is termed the Green Infrastructure (GI) approach. GI networks it is argued are discernible at different scales, and across urban, peri-urban and rural landscapes. Furthermore GI is considered as supportive of ecological processes whilst simultaneously contributing to better human health and well-being. Moreover, especially in urban regions, GI is being placed at the same level as other essential urban infrastructure. Recognising these developments the authors have devised an updated conceptual framework for the development, management, and analysis of GI networks by focusing on contemporary drivers nested together at the territorial level and with a prominent role for temporal considerations. The latter has hitherto been only weakly presented in the GI discourse. Development of the conceptual model has been informed by reference to examples drawn from across Europe. Finally, directions are provided for future research, and for developing and delivering GI in the emerging context of ecosystem services and human well-being

Feminist scholarship and campaigning have been notably successful in recent years in putting the concept of the unpaid carer onto the public agenda. The caring that women do as a feature of paid work, however, has proved a more intractable topic. This paper argues that masculinist visions gender the concepts of bureaucracy and profession, dichotomizing competence and care, and masking both the reality and the potential of public carework. The paper proposes a distinction between caregiving, carework and professional care. It then develops an analysis of professional care by reference to a recent campaign by the leading nurses' organization in the UK, seeking to highlight the worth of nursing work. It notes that the carework discussion has barely any echo in the debate about the 'new managerialism' in the public sector and argues that a critical understanding of the centrality of binary gendered thought is crucial to a constructive critique of today's emphasis on bringing health care into the market-place.