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The negative impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on women's employment, care responsibilities, and access to services have motivated an unprecedented level of advocacy around strengthening national social protection systems from a gender perspective. Yet very little empirical evidence exists about what a gender‐responsive social protection system entails in practice. This paper addresses this gap through a comparative analysis of 52 national social protection strategies from primarily low‐and middle‐income countries. To analyse the gender responsiveness of these strategies, we developed an analytical framework based on international human rights standards and social policy, gender and development literature. Through presentation of the framework and our findings, this paper makes several contributions to scholarship and practice. First, our framework―the first of its kind―offers a novel conceptual and methodological contribution by enabling a systematic, comparative assessment of national approaches to social protection from a gender perspective. Second, the framework enables the systematisation of empirical evidence on the degree to which gender is integrated into social protection systems. By applying it to national social protection strategies, we identify which gendered risks and vulnerabilities are most commonly acknowledged and addressed in countries' efforts to create gender‐responsive social protection systems. We also highlight a concerning gap between rhetoric and response when it comes to gender equality in the strategic plans that governments lay out for these systems. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic cross‐country assessment of such documents. We conclude with future directions for research and practice, including the gap between recognition and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this Special Issue Part I "Revisioning, Rethinking, Restructuring Gender at Work: Quo Vadis Gender Stereotypes?" focus on the current state of gender inequality, particularly stereotypes. We present studies showing that differences in gender stereotypes still exist, confirm disadvantages for women in male‐dominated roles and sectors and when the employment sector is not specified, but also disadvantages for men in female‐dominated roles and sectors. In contrast to this general trend, one paper in Part II of this Special Issue found a preference for women over men as job candidates in their study. Incongruence emerged as a striking common theme to explain these gender differences, whereby some studies focused on the perceived incongruence from the actor's perspective and how external factors contribute to these perceptions, whereas others looked at the perceived incongruence from the observer's perspective. We summarize the papers and briefly discuss the key points of Part I at the end of this editorial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in Part II of this Special Issue on "Revisioning, Rethinking, Restructuring Gender at Work" emphasize the factors contributing to gender stereotypes. These papers share the aim of understanding the relevance of individual factors, boundary conditions, and of broadening the scope beyond heterosexual women and men. We summarize the papers of this Special Issue Part II and discuss the key takeaways from the whole Special Issue, including Part I "Revisioning, Rethinking, Restructuring Gender at Work: Quo Vadis Gender Stereotypes?" and Part II "Revisioning, Rethinking, Restructuring Gender at Work: Contributors to Gender‐Role Stereotyping", and implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dried fish—here defined broadly as aquatic animals preserved using simple techniques, such as sun‐drying, salting, fermentation, and smoking that permit storage as foods at ambient temperature for extended periods without specialized packaging—have received little direct attention in fisheries research. This lack of visibility belies their historical and contemporary importance. Prior to the introduction of refrigeration, dried fish were the main form in which fisheries catches were traded and consumed. Dried fish products remain a core component of production, trade, diets, and cuisines across the world, particularly in the Global South. The dried fish sector provides employment for millions of people, particularly women, who comprise most of the fish‐drying workforce in many locations. However, the sector also confronts and creates significant challenges including food safety concerns and exploitative labour conditions. This paper is the first systematic assessment of the global literature on dried fish, comprised of a sample of >1100 references. In contrast to the general fisheries literature, which is dominated by studies of ecology and governance and focusses mainly on primary production, the dried fish literature is dominated by studies from food science and concentrates on the processing segment of fish value chains. As such, it offers valuable reference point for fisheries research, which is becoming increasingly attentive to food systems. This paper uncovers a wealth of insights buried in this largely unheralded literature, and identifies key thematic intersections, gaps and research questions that remain to be addressed in the study of dried fish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is resilience in the context of work environments where women face barriers as significant as career discrimination and harassment? In such a context, is resilience an individual responsibility? How can organizations contribute to and support employee resilience? And where is gender in this equation? This conceptual paper explores these questions using aviation, the skilled trades (i.e., carpentry, welding, plumbing) and the military as case studies to understand how gender inclusion could be better supported by resilient organizations. The barriers for women in male‐dominated industries include social exclusion, marginalization, discrimination, harassment, and other forms of social closure. How these barriers can be overcome is not well understood. We argue that individual resilience plays a part in women thriving and developing enduring careers but can only occur in combination with support from gender inclusion strategies and organizational resilience. We have developed the Resilience for Gender Inclusion (RGI) model combining gender inclusion strategies with organizational resilience strategies. The RGI model demonstrates how employee and organizational resilience intersect and may lead to the transformative potential of inclusive cultures of diversity. This will improve employee wellbeing and self‐efficacy and create a much needed sense of belonging and social inclusion for women in male‐dominated occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; employment; families; gendered impact EN COVID-19 pandemic employment families gendered impact 1927 1934 8 10/04/22 20221101 NES 221101 The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of women in the labor market and the unrecognized value of essential occupations such as care and education (Queisser et al., 2020). At the intersection of work and family, how has the COVID-19 pandemic affected work-family balance among working men and women? Overall, this paper extends previous work on changes in gender attitudes during the pandemic (Rosenfeld & Tomiyama, 2021) by identifying some pandemic-related factors that may have triggered these changes as well as demonstrating variations across family and work contexts. Academically, how does the COVID-19 pandemic extend or challenge our theoretical knowledge about gendered labor markets, gendered workplaces, and/or gendered distributions of paid work, care tasks, household tasks, and leisure?. [Extracted from the article]

In developing countries, often a major segment of the population is characterized as poor. Thus, social protection programs play a crucial role in facilitating the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda across these nations. Among the several socioeconomic benefits associated with the social safety net programs, the impacts on female labor force participation are vital from the perspectives of enhancing women empowerment and welfare. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to evaluate the impacts of social transfers under the "allowances for the widow, deserted, and destitute women" social protection program on the rural female labor force participation responses in Bangladesh. The overall results from the probit, IV‐probit, and propensity score matching techniques provide statistical evidence regarding the cash transfers acting as a "mini‐push" to nudge greater participation of the beneficiary women in the labor force. Moreover, the cash transfers are also found to positively influence the labor force participation decisions of the other female members within the households of the program beneficiaries. Besides, the female labor force participation decisions are evidenced to be heterogeneous across the age cohorts, marital statuses, and the gender of the household head. In line with the major findings from the analyses, some key policy interventions are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern agricultural farms offer huge potential in creating employment opportunities, which, in turn, are expected to reduce fertility. The Ethiopian government has recently leased out millions of hectares of farmland to investors under highly concessionary terms. However, little is known regarding women's farm employment effect on their fertility. Using survey data, this paper analyzed this link in the context of Saudi Star and Merti Agricultural Development farms. Results showed lower odds of fertility intention among employed women compared to non‐employed women where employment is measured more broadly. This result at a glance appears to be consistent with conventional theory which considers children as resulting from parental choice relative to other essential household goods constrained by resource shortages in the household's utility maximization framework. Where employment is measured rather narrowly (standard way) as in most socioeconomic research, however, the odds of fertility intention is higher. The two results were expected to be reversed since fertility was expected to be lower where employment is measured more narrowly than broadly where a range of employments are included. Additionally, effects associated with the recent establishment of Saudi Star farm compared to the more matured farms in Merti are likely to reduce fertility intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female labor force participation rates have been stagnating despite rising female education in sub‐Saharan Africa since the turn of the millennium. Using representative and repeated census data from a heterogeneous sample of 13 sub‐Saharan African countries, this paper analyzes female labor force participation from a demographic perspective. We show that enrollment in education is substantially higher among the most recent female cohorts than among the earlier‐born ones. The higher enrollment mechanically depresses female labor force participation, weakening the relationship between female labor force participation and education. After taking this cohort trend into account, we find a strong and positive association between female labor force participation and female education. We further find a cohort trend toward higher female employment in the nonprimary sector and a positive association between female employment in the nonprimary sector and female education. The higher investments in education by younger female cohorts, together with the demographics of sub‐Saharan African countries, have implications for a potentially arising "demographic dividend". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of maternal education on child mortality in Bangladesh by exploiting quasi‐experimental variations in the duration of exposure to a school stipend project for identification. Results from the instrumental variable estimation indicate that an additional year of maternal schooling reduces both under‐five and infant mortality by about 20 percent. The findings are statistically significant and robust to a number of model specifications, including survival models controlling for right censoring of child mortality. Analysis of potential mechanisms suggests that maternal education reduces child mortality through greater wealth and literacy, positive assortative mating, lower fertility, delayed marriage and childbearing, greater health‐related knowledge, better health‐seeking behaviors, and female empowerment, but not through female employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While gender equality at work and the gendered parameters of workplace conditions are of interest to feminist researchers, this paper brings together sociological and public health perspectives to interrogate factors impacting women who return to work (RTW) while maintaining breastfeeding. Our inquiry is focused on female‐dominated professions, teaching, nursing, and midwifery, and our findings suggest that breastfeeding obstacles exist even when gender‐inclusive policies appear to support women. Workplaces generate both overt and subtle barriers to breastfeeding, which force many women to stop earlier than they intended or create ongoing worry about maintaining breastmilk supply. Interviews with participants who maintained breastfeeding after RTW generated three overarching themes: women's determination to get back into the workforce, not wanting to "rock the boat", and the difficulty in keeping their "head above water". Despite workplace policies that appeared to support breastfeeding, the workplace catered to a supposedly gender‐neutral worker and policies did not translate into practice. Given the many sacrifices that women make to maintain breastfeeding, the level of workplace apathy was surprising, especially in female dominated professions. Our research foregrounds breastfeeding corporeality, not as excess but as an inevitable and essential feature of workplaces, which needs to be acknowledged and accommodated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thousands of rural‐to‐urban migrant women find employment in urban areas of mainland Southeast Asia as beer sellers, beer promoters, and karaoke girls whose duties include selling alcoholic drinks, often on commission, and entertaining clients. Using the label of beer sellers to refer to all of these workers, this paper draws from a sequential mixed‐methods participatory study conducted with migrant beer sellers in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand to examine beer selling as intimate labor. Deploying emotional, affective, and embodied labor as interactive components of intimate labor, migrant beer sellers as members of the urban precariat are subject to myriad forms of surveillance that operate in concert to inform the parameters of beer selling as an intimate industry, the somato‐social presentation of workers' bodies, and their intercorporeal interactions with clients. Together, they work to reinforce gendered and racialized social hierarchies and the normative social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the status and determinants of gender disparities in financial inclusion using a sample of 4,466 individuals from the Finscope survey in Tanzania. The results provide evidence to support gender disparities in financial inclusion, mostly pronounced in formal savings (21.3%), formal accounts (10.6%) and mobile money accounts (9.4%). This is reflected in 17.1% less likelihood of female ownership of a formal savings account but a 2% higher likelihood to access formal credit. Finally, the paper documents evidence that gender disparities in financial inclusion are explained by lower levels of education, income and over‐dependence of women on men. The findings support gender mainstreaming in other sectors to increase employment and education for women to close the gender gap in financial access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 crisis has translated into an unprecedented humanitarian crisis for the poor and marginalized groups in society. The countrywide lockdowns, quarantine measures, and mobility restrictions across 200 countries of the world have resulted in a host of negative manifestations for women. There have been unprecedented losses in the informal economy, which is dominated by women. Some scholars also contend that the pandemic will translate into heightened burden of unpaid domestic work, loss of economic autonomy and disruption to maternal health services. Despite these factors a gendered perspective is absent in the policy response to this crisis. It is against this background that the present paper employed a feminist intersectionality lens to conduct participatory field based research on the lived experiences of women in informal employment in Indian Punjab during the COVID‐19 crisis. The research unearthed the specific pathways through which existing socio‐economic inequities rooted in caste, class and occupational entities magnify the vulnerabilities experienced by women during such a health crisis. The research offers a contextualized framework for understanding the gendered impacts of the crisis. It also highlights the urgency of taking account of gender specific constraints during the health crisis so as to institute robust, effective and equitable policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the intersections between migration, gender and economic opportunity in later medieval England. Drawing on the returns of the alien subsidy, a direct tax imposed on the country’s alien residents during the second half of the fifteenth century, it argues that immigrant women encountered a medieval equivalent of the so-called ‘double disadvantage’, having fewer opportunities to work in independent occupations than immigrant men and English women. Female aliens were more likely than either their male fellow-immigrants or their native counterparts to be employed in service, and significant numbers of alien women can be linked to the low-status prostitution sector. Providing little evidence of economic betterment, evidence from the alien subsidies thus suggests that the so-called ‘golden age’ thesis, according to which economic opportunities for women improved in post-Black Death England, did not apply to the country’s immigrant women. The paper also questions, however, whether the economic expectations of female aliens either actually were in fact or thought to be the same as those of alien men and English women. In an unusually early example of transnational life-cycle service, female immigrant servants may never have had any intention of settling permanently and building a successful life in England, but rather may have come to work for only a limited period, returning home and capitalising on their foreign experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition, through the reassessment of the importance of caregiving, women would not only be rewarded economically but also encouraged to feel proud of performing care work.[9] However, Van Parijs's claim that through the basic income the importance and value of care would become socially recognized differs from the position of care ethics. As a result, because care is a public value it is not enough to institutionalize the basic income, and there should be further focus on whether there are other initiatives that can respect and sustain care and care relationships, and promote the shared social responsibility to provide care. CARE ETHICS AND ITS POLICY IMPLICATION Care ethics has been presented as an alternative moral theory based on the undeniable human experience of the need for care and its value (Held 2006). The paper argues that the basic income does not constitute a sufficient response to the fact of universal human dependency and people's inevitable care needs, does not treat care as a public value to an adequate degree, and cannot adequately identify and address the structural inequalities of care produced by the current socioeconomic system. [Extracted from the article]

Labour's spatial fix has become a key term in labour geography scholarship in recent decades. The concept has been widely used to understand labour's agency in its own social reproduction in different historical and geographical capitalist social formations. Departing from the position that state socialism was part of global capitalism, this paper applies the concept of labour's spatial fix to the context of state socialist Hungary. The analysis differentiates between three dimensions of labour's spatial fix in social reproduction: wage work (with particular attention given to female employment), income from the "second economy" and housing. The interrelatedness of these dimensions of labour's spatial fix, as well as their different geographies, are shown in an analysis covering Hungary of the 1970s. It is argued that there is a need for more extensive research on how conditions for social reproduction are established in the concept of labour's spatial fix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the available quantitative evidence on the relationship between explicit family policy and women's employment outcomes in 45 high‐income countries between 1980 and 2016. At the methodological level, we gathered 238 papers through a four‐stage systematic qualitative review. We included articles published in English in international journals or by leading research institutes. Despite the accrued importance of the field, comparative works and national case studies do not sufficiently engage one another for methodological and disciplinary reasons. Our contribution is to integrate the findings from both streams of the literature in two ways. First, we chart systematically the debate describing its evolution over four decades, the disciplines involved (demography, economics, politics, social policy, sociology, and interdisciplinary work), and the geographical and policy breadth of the empirical contributions. Second, we provide a rich guide for scholars in the field by exploring how national case studies fit (or not) the broad trends captured in comparative research and discussing key and controversial debates in the field. In conclusion, we point out also important gaps in the literature and propose new avenues for future research. An exhaustive set of tables provides information on each comparative and national case study and on the databases and variables employed in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the economic landscape of contemporary Nunavut from the perspective of Inuit women's labour force activity. Gender is shown to play a crucial role in explaining wage work dynamics in contemporary Nunavut and, more importantly, within Inuit families. Despite the centrality of Inuit women's employment, family, and domestic responsibilities-as well as their increased participation in northern development-very few studies have examined gender dynamics in this context. Drawing on 29 families' personal stories collected by the author in the community of Kangiqtugaapik, Nunavut between 2011 and 2013, this paper examines how wage work is organized at the community, family, and individual levels. Nouveau régime de travail au Nunavut : perspective sur l'identité de genre Cet article examine le paysage économique du Nunavut à partir de l'activité économique des femmes inuites. Dans le Nunavut contemporain, l'identité de genre joue un rôle déterminant dans les dynamiques de travail salarié, particulièrement au sein des familles. Bien que les femmes inuites occupent une place centrale sur le marché du travail, dans les activités familiales et domestiques, et que leur participation au développement du nord n'ait cessé de croître, jusqu'à ce jour peu d'études se sont intéressées aux dynamiques de genre dans ce contexte. Afin d'examiner l'organisation du travail salarié à trois échelles - la communauté, la famille et l'individu - l'article s'appuie sur les récits individuels de 29 familles recueillis par l'auteur dans la communauté de Kangiqtugaapik, Nunavut entre 2011 et 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands on previous work about women's non-linear and frayed careers by examining the experiences of women who have attempted to return to science, engineering and technology (SET) professions in the UK and Republic of Ireland after taking a career break. These women potentially offer an important perspective on gender and career, because of the deep-rooted, gendered associations of science and technology with masculinity. Drawing on qualitative interviews with women SET professionals, the paper identifies three narratives - Rebooting, Rerouting and Retreating - which women use to talk about their careers. Some of these women present themselves as career changers, having often made compromises and trade-offs, while others, who have returned to their substantive professions, focus on continuity in their career narratives. The precarious nature of their careers is also apparent and in some cases leads to opting out or retreating. The paper concludes by exploring how women's scientist and technical identities persist, even among those who had not returned to work, and are drawn on in narratives of return and career change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the careers of 27 women employed as part-time managers in a range of UK public, private and not-for-profit sector organizations. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews, the article briefly summarizes the career trajectories of these women, prior to and after a transition to part-time working, before exploring whether and how career progression is linked to the support of role models and mentors. The part-time managers in this sample held varied careers while working full-time, but careers often stalled following a transition to part-time work. Given research has identified role models and mentors as having a positive impact upon career progression, this paper explores the existence of role models and mentors within the sample of female part-time managers. While the majority of interviewees identified role models, just over half identified these as negative role models who did little to champion part-time working. Drawing upon Gibson's 'positive/negative' role model dimensions, we argue the likelihood of identifying positive and negative role models alters when an analysis takes account of gender and working hours. Few interviewees identified mentors: just four women spoke of being mentored currently, though ten others identified being mentored in the past. We argue this lack of mentors and the identification of negative role models, the majority of whom were women, exacerbates the already precarious position of these female part-time managers. The paper concludes by commenting on the lack of support for female part-time managers, and the paucity of influential people working part-time in organizations, despite the rapid growth of part-time work in the UK over the past four decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wage differential between women and men persists in advanced economies despite the inflow of women into qualified occupations in recent years. Using five waves of the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey (LNU), this paper explores the gender wage gap in Sweden during the 1974-2010 period overall and by skill level. The empirical analyses showed that the general gender wage gap has been nearly unchanged for the past 30 years. However, the gender difference in wage in less qualified occupations fell considerably, whereas the gender pay gap remained stable for men and women in qualified occupations. The larger significance of family responsibilities for wages in qualified occupations is one likely explanation for this result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an exploratory study examining women's views about and experiences of retirement. It has long been recognized that women's careers often follow a different path than men's due to the differential impact of family and domestic responsibilities and their relative underrepresentation at higher levels of organizations. However, many studies of retirement have implicitly assumed a conventional male career as the norm, where retirement is seen as marking a neat ending to continuous employment. This paper aims to present a richer understanding of women's retirement, utilizing contextual national data and qualitative analysis. The paper begins with a brief summary of literature looking at women's career development. We then explore the concept of retirement and consider current literature with regard to women's retirement. Following a brief discussion of our research approach, we provide some national context using quantitative data. We then discuss the qualitative findings, examining the areas of continuity and change that women experienced in retirement and exploring the factors that they felt enabled and constrained them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women are globally underrepresented in the energy industry. This paper reviews existing academic and practitioner literature on women's employment in renewable energy in industrialized nations, emerging economies and developing countries. It highlights similarities and differences in occupational patterns in women's employment in renewables in different parts of the world, and makes recommendations for optimizing women's participation. Findings reveal the need for broader socially-progressive policies and shifts in societal attitudes about gender roles, in order for women to benefit optimally from employment in renewables. In some industrialized countries, restructuring paid employment in innovative ways while unlinking social protection from employment status has been suggested as a way to balance gender equity with economic security and environmental protection. However, without more transformative social changes in gender relations, such strategies may simply reinforce rather than subvert existing gender inequities both in paid employment and in unpaid domestic labor. Grounded interventions to promote gender equality in renewable energy employment - especially within the context of increasing access to energy services for underserved communities - are more prevalent and better-established in some non- OECD ( Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. OECD countries might be well-advised to try to implement certain programs and policies that are already in place in some emerging economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Girls' magazines act as important texts through which meanings of childhood, girlhood and womanhood are mediated and constructed. However, previous research has focused on either the conditions of work practices or cultural production of the magazine as a product. Separately in each context women or girls have been described as abject. The paper will argue that employees working on girls' magazines experienced a simultaneous double abjection: in the gendered working practices and as an outcome of the construction of girlhood they produced. Two studies of all female teams producing teenage and pre-teen magazines were used, including interviews and observations. Our approach engaged with the difficulty of examining abjectivity in working practices, as present but marginalized, silenced and othered. As a result of scrutinizing the gendered embodiment in these studies, the findings suggest there is a relation between the working practices and gendered cultural production, forming a process of abjection. This process was threefold: a marginalization of a particular gendered embodiment, the cracks or leaks where abjectivity became apparent and the silencing of those leaks. This study will be of value to scholars interested in gendered embodiment in workplaces, abjectivity and cultural production, noting the interrelation between these areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the labour market, especially the rise in the employment of women (lone or partnered) with children, alongside an increased policy emphasis on work as a component of active citizenship for men and women, have stimulated the development of research examining the balance between work and home. Although sociologists have long been interested in the interface between the spheres of paid work and domestic life, understandings of the subjective experience of health and illness have tended to keep the domains of family and work separate. This paper addresses the construction of health and illness as operating at the interface between the worlds of work and home. Interviews were conducted with 30 mothers in paid work and having primary school aged children; the study was located in Edinburgh, Scotland. Through an analysis of the interview accounts, this paper examines respondents' experiences and constructions of health, sickness and wellbeing in themselves and in their children. Four areas are discussed: respondents' accounts of the effects of caring and providing on their own health; respondents' accounts of the influence of workplace relationships in the construction of sickness; respondents' accounts of negotiating absence for their children's sickness and how they made sense of and defined child sickness. We argue that managing sickness, itself an anticipated but unpredictable event, gives analytical purchase to understanding the values and practices that characterise the interrelationship between work and family life. The intersections of home and work operate powerfully in respondents' constructions of health and sickness, and the analysis demonstrates how these are played out in everyday life, at home and at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question whether geographical access to institutionalised childcare influences mothers’ labour-force participation in the Netherlands. The conceptual framework of the paper is based on a time-geographic perspective of female labour-force participation. According to this perspective, women are faced with severe day-to-day space-time constraints that form a spatial barrier to labour-force participation. It is argued that, for many mothers with pre-school-age children, access to employment opportunities is partly determined by geographical access to childcare facilities. Using data from the Netherlands Housing Demand survey and a detailed measure of geographical access to childcare, it is shown that, for mothers with young children, the probability of being engaged in paid employment increases as the number of day-care slots per 100 children in the residential area increases. In the regression model, the effect of access to childcare on mothers’ labour-force participation is estimated after individual, household, and local labour market characteristics are controlled for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature has identified particular restrictions on the ability of women to obtain paid work in rural areas, with lack of job opportunities, lack of child care facilities, access problems and cultural expectations about a woman's role in rural society all bearing negatively on the ability to attain jobs for which women are qualified. This paper acknowledges these constraints but cautions against placing too much emphasis on them. Drawing on census data at the NUTS5 level, this paper examines the 1,184 NUTS5 zones (wards) in the East of England Region, comparing labour market contexts for cities, mid-sized towns and rural areas, with rural zones distinguished by the nature of their linkages with cities and local arenas of employment. The paper shows that rural areas in general have rather similar labour market engagements for women as urban zones. Within rural areas there are differences that need noting, with places with weak integration into city-centred economies standing apart from the rest in terms of lower rates of female labour market activity. Even here, however, relationships are not uniformly negative, with a general picture of rather slim differences between the area-types under investigation. The main message of the paper is not to over-emphasize the 'peculiarities' of 'rural' phenomena, which can bear heavy, if not dominant traces, of society-wide processes, as well as revealing as important a level of distinction within rural zones as between them and urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The participation of married women in the labour market has been increasing since industrialization in the 1960s in Korea; in 1999 it overtook that of unmarried women. This raises the issue of how women reconcile paid and unpaid work and how state policy responds to this issue. In Korea, there have been numerous policy reforms designed to support working women in combining work and family life. For example, a parental leave scheme was introduced in 1995 and maternity benefits were also introduced in 2001. However, it is doubtful whether these policies can be effective in practice in Korea, where Confucian traditions in respect of women's roles remain strong. Confucian tradition has long influenced Korean society culturally and socially. Although Korean society today is not as Confucian as in the past, some traditions still remain strong, particularly with regard to the family: for example filial piety, seniority, the married woman's responsibility for her parents-in-law. This paper will argue that Confucian tradition makes for difficulties in Korean women's experiences of reconciling paid and unpaid work and also affects the formation of state policy. The paper explores the impact of the Confucian welfare regimes on Korean women's experience of reconciling paid and unpaid care work, and questions the gendered characteristics of the Confucian welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a neglected area of women's reproductive experience, namely major illness during pregnancy. It draws on a qualitative study of 15 women who had either a pre-existing illness or developed a major health problem during pregnancy, and explores in detail the accounts of four contrasting case histories. Analysis is framed by the concept of career. It is argued, however, that an understanding of the women's experiences requires that pregnancy and illness are treated as separate, but co-existent, career paths. Pregnancy and illness were more than a concatenation of contingencies for each other. Pregnancy and the subsequent birth were influenced by the preceding and envisaged course of the illness, and the experience of illness was partly configured by the events of pregnancy. The paper considers the conceptual implications of multiple career analysis, and argues that a multiple career analytic approach has relevance for an understanding of other areas of health care, such as the experience of patients suffering from two or more concurrent illnesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the provision and use of rural childcare, drawing on original data collected as part of a study of formal and informal childcare services in the County of Devon in England. The paper goes beyond existing discussions of childcare in rural areas in attempting to place patterns of use in the broader context of household gender relations and the cultural construction of rurality. We argue that decisions around child care by rural families need to be considered in relation not only to the availability of different sorts of service but also to the employment aspirations and choices of men and women and the assumptions of the primacy of women’s mothering role. Such issues are underpinned, we contest, by idyllic constructions of rural family life and social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing public concern in recent years about the place of women in business, gender diversity in corporate governance has made little progress. As a consequence, the issue has captured the worldwide attention of policymakers. Several countries are currently adopting or considering the adoption of laws or regulations to promote gender diversity on corporate boards. The purpose of this paper is to compare the effectiveness of using legislative or regulatory means to increase female representation instead of allowing firms to voluntarily fix their own non-legally binding targets. We find that the relation between gender diversity and performance is positive in countries using the voluntary approach while it is negative in countries using the regulatory approach. We conclude that public policy aimed at increasing the number of women on corporate boards should be introduced gradually and voluntarily rather than quickly and coercively to avoid sub-optimal board composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on empirical research data on the work of flight attendants, this paper will explore Marcel Mauss's theory of 'gift' exchange relations, with particular reference to his concern with the 'exchange of aesthetics' (Mauss 1954), as an analytical model which may contribute to our understanding of 'women's work' in contemporary Western societies, of which, we shall argue, the work of female flight attendants is a notable example. It will begin by locating the authors' analytical and theoretical concerns with 'women's work' within the context of recent empirical research. It will then go on to outline briefly a Maussian model of exchange relations and to identify the potential utility of this analytical model for the study of women's work. This paper then goes on to offer an analytical account of empirical research into the work of flight attendants and to analyse the ways in which airline service provision constitutes a critical case study of women's work, certain elements of which involve a form of 'gift' exchange relations which operate, not as an alternative to, but inside - and in the interests of - commodity exchange relations. Finally, in the light of recent feminist work, this paper will conclude by suggesting the wider implications of this analytical model for the study of gender and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines one aspect of child-care arrangements that has been largely ignored by previous research: that most day care is relatively temporary, changing often over the course of a few years. The data come from a four-year longitudinal study of a representative sample of New York City mothers of preschool children. The findings indicate that most mothers change care arrangements frequently. Substitution of group day care and multiple care arrangements for care by relatives was the most common pattern found. The paper discusses some of the implications of these frequent changes in day care for women's employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an analysis of primary and secondary documentary sources this paper examines the relationship of medical men to state intervention in women's labour. Focusing on factory legislation it explores the extent to which this intervention may be seen as an attempt to alleviate the health consequences of industrial work or as a means of social control, which is defined here in terms of actual restrictions on women's participation in the paid labour market and of the assertion of their primary role within the private domain. The involvement of medical practitioners in such questions is also assessed in terms of the consequences for industrial medicine. The paper argues that factory legislation failed to meet either its social purpose, or the health needs of working women, while reinforcing the ideology of 'separate spheres' and the moral and social responsibilities of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we test the argument that self-employment may be a strategy for dealing with competing demands of work and family. We do this by comparing work-family conflict experienced by self-employed and employed men and women. By examining to what extent the self-employed versus regularly employed value time for themselves and their family - i.e., whether they are driven by family/lifestyle motives in their working life - we examine whether self-employment can help reduce work-family conflict among those guided by family/lifestyle motives. Using data from a 2011 Swedish survey of 2483 self-employed and 2642 regularly employed, the analyses indicate that experiences of work-family conflict differ between self-employed and employees. Self-employed men and women, especially those with employees, generally experience more work-family conflict than do employees. However, self-employment can sometimes be a strategy for dealing with competing demands of work and family life. The presence of family/lifestyle motives generally decreases the probability of experiencing work-family conflict, particularly among self-employed women with employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The negative physiological consequences of night work are well evidenced, but there has been limited research on the gendered consequences of night work for partnered women with children. This paper examines women's experiences of night work by drawing on qualitative interview and audio sleep diary data with 20 UK female nurses working non-regular rotating shifts, together with interview and diary data from their male partners and children. The analysis shows how the lived experience of women's night work is characterized by three phases, which we discuss within a timescape perspective. Alongside changes to paid work and sleep during the period of night shifts, the 'preparation' and 'recovery' phases of women's night work involve intense periods of considerable additional unpaid and unrecognized work and anxiety. Gendered expectations for household management and family wellbeing mean that women night workers undertake considerable responsibility for complex planning before night shifts begin, and re-enter established domestic routines within hours after night shifts end. Women maintain continuity for their families by actively managing the impacts of night work. This enables the fulfilment and 'display' of successful and normative gendered patterns of domestic responsibility, which appears to be central to women's own coping with night shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women remain under-represented in top leadership positions in work organizations, a reality that reflects a variety of barriers that create a glass ceiling effect. However, some women do attain top leadership positions, leading scholars to probe under what conditions women are promoted despite seemingly intractable and well-documented barriers. Previous scholarship tends to posit individual-level explanations, suggesting either that women who attain top leadership positions are exceptional or that potential women leaders lack key qualities, such as assertiveness. Much less scholarship has explored institutional-level mechanisms that may increase women's ascension to top positions. This analysis seeks to fill this gap by testing three institutional-level theories that may shape women's access to and tenure in top positions: the glass cliff, decision-maker diversity, and the saviour effect. To test these theories we rely on a dataset that includes all CEO transitions in Fortune 500 companies over a 20-year period. Contrary to the predictions of the glass cliff, we find that diversity among decision makers - not firm performance - significantly increases women's likelihood of being promoted to top leadership positions. We also find, contrary to the predictions of the saviour effect, that diversity among decision makers increases women leaders' tenure as CEOs regardless of firm performance. By identifying contextual factors that increase women's mobility, the paper makes an important contribution to the processes that shape and reproduce gender inequality in work organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The market for global business process outsourcing (BPO) is predicted to triple in size by 2020 (NASSCOM). Such explosive growth has had and will continue to have huge economic benefits for Asia. The benefits are clearly manifest in India and the Philippines, who are both leading offshore outsourcing (O&O) destinations for the BPO industry. In India, this development has resulted in an initiative to increase the number of women in the BPO workforce by a staggering 50 per cent. The implications of such a huge push has tremendous social impact, yet little is known about the BPO industry and the role of language in these O&O destinations. The present paper focuses on the impact of English and the role of women in this global workforce by addressing the following question: 'What is the impact of the BPO industry, and specifically call centre employment, on women in India?' Drawing on data collected through interviews, the findings show that women's lives have changed in a number of different ways. Informants reported experiencing greater freedom, financial independence and other significant changes. The findings provide a lucid representation of the role of English language in globalisation within the BPO industry in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores spatial entrapment among women. The analysis contributes to the debate concerning the spatial entrapment thesis, advancing research through application of a mixed method empirical approach, and focus on dual career households in the UK. Data from the UK Labour Force Survey Household Data-Set is combined with a recent case study of Greater Nottingham, England. The empirical findings are indicative of relative equality between career men and women in hours worked for an employer, particularly in professional occupations. But, while a level of equality is present in many workplaces, gender inequity within the home persists. Women, on average, work closer to their place of residence. School age dependent children present a particular constraint. Women are spatially entrapped by household responsibilities, with potentially severe career implications. Redressing this inequity within the household, however, represents a major challenge for future policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining paid work and motherhood is difficult because social institutions are still based on the assumption that these are mutually exclusive. Working mothers manage the tension between work and motherhood daily, and as they do, they establish new social patterns. This paper reports on the findings of a study of 21 middle-class working mothers and argues that they have been unable to challenge the punitive organization of work and motherhood. These mothers use the metaphor of 'balance' to describe how they manage the tension. However, their narratives of the difficulties of managing working motherhood tell a different story. In fact, 'balance' is an ideology, which functions to obscure the contradiction between work and motherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential for the concepts of time and space, together with the analogy of landscapes, to aid the exploration and understandings of women's careers. Drawing upon case studies of women who chose to opt in to self-employment, we examine how the multi-faceted histories of these women are drawn upon as they remember the past, explain contemporary experiences, and anticipate their futures. All the women spoke of opting in to self-employment as the best of times; they talked of greater control over work content, the relationship between family, gender and paid work, and self-determinism and autonomy. They noted times when their careers were frayed but only in retrospect could they assess the context, consequences and impact of events. The framework of careerscapes - our unique blending of the notion of careers along with socio-economic and geographical interpretations of scapes - offers a framework to examine frayed careers and multiple aspects of working and caring over time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite decades of focus on gender equality and work–family balance, parenthood still affects mothers' and fathers' careers differently. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Norwegian mothers who are relinquishing high-commitment careers of law and consultancy, this paper questions the adequacy of established explanations emphasizing constraints vs. individual preferences. Our sample of female professionals living in a well-developed welfare state is particularly apt to explore the processes and mechanisms upholding the statistically gendered pattern of women reducing their work commitment after childbirth. These doubly privileged mothers might be considered to have the best odds for combining career and work commitment with motherhood. Thus, we argue that the approach emphasizing practical constraints does not sufficiently account for the withdrawal from high-commitment careers among these female professionals. Nevertheless, we are not content with the claim of Preference Theory that this shift in commitment is merely a matter of ‘not-so-dedicated’ women discovering their ‘genuine’ preferences. Rather, in order to understand why and how this shift occurs, we explore the culturally constructed rationalities and schemas of both work and family devotions. We specifically examine the circumstances, mechanisms and steps in a seemingly individual process of making the shift in commitment from a promising career to a family-friendly job. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates how generous parental leave arrangements designed to enhance gender equality and work–family balance by simply reducing practical constraints may have limited – or even counterproductive – impact within high-commitment occupations where the ‘irreplaceability’ of workers is taken for granted. Our findings indicate that unless the culturally (re)produced discourses, demands and expectations of both work and family are exposed and challenged, even intentionally gender neutral work–family policies will continue to facilitate mothers' career withdrawals, expressed as modified individual preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of suicide has long been an important socioeconomic issue studied in many countries. Suicides inject an atmosphere of unrest into society, and media attention furthers that social uneasiness. From the viewpoint of economics and management, suicide is a waste of human resource: it decreases the labor force in society and deteriorates human capital. This paper provides a series of analyses of suicide rate based on theoretical reasoning and empirical approaches. Aggregate data from G7 countries are obtained and stacked into pane! data for analysis. Data are collected for different age groups. Even though suicide issues have been extensively discussed in the past, newly developed econometric tools are applied to her. Beyond previously recognized relationships between economic factors and suicide rates findings include that unemployment strikes men more than women in terms of psychological pressure: for middle age or older women, unemployment may even be positive for the entire family; and female labor force participation exerts pressure on male counterparts and increases its suicide rate. As a result, a low income family with an unemployed man and an employed woman is at high risk for adult male suicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical research has highlighted the constraints on mothers' workforce participation when children have disabilities, but the policies and associated strategies needed to address these issues have received less attention. Greater attention to explanatory theory and associated research is needed. The authors' paper identifies major explanatory concepts in studies of women's workforce participation, and examines the extent to which these have been tested in studying the workforce participation of mothers of children with disabilities. They also identify constructs and empirical research findings from the latter body of research that have implications for theories of all women's workforce participation. The analysis demonstrates that there are many potentially relevant constructs from theories of women's workforce participation that have not been applied to studies of mothers of children with disabilities. Similarly, some findings about the influence of disability-related factors on mothers' workforce participation have implications for operational constructs associated with theories of women's workforce participation. The authors' examination of theoretical frameworks and empirical research underscored the importance of exchange and cross-fertilization of ideas between disability-oriented research and that concerned with women's labor force participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates equity programs in the finance and insurance industry to identify the approach to implementing equal employment opportunity used by Australian organisations. The research uses data from organisational reports submitted to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency in order to identify issues in one industry, and link organisational approach to equal opportunity with the employment status of women. Despite the high numbers of women employed in this female-dominated industry, there are limited numbers of women in management. The findings show no correlation between the equal opportunity approach used and numbers of women in management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends prior research on the romance of leadership by examining (a) whether the romance of leadership holds for women as well as for men, and (b) the impact of the romance of leadership on performance-based pay. An experimental study ( N= 210) suggests that the romance of leadership does exist for both men and women but that the process of pay allocation differs as a function of gender. For a female leader, the allocation of a performance-related bonus is based on perceptions of her charisma and leadership ability rather than resulting directly from company performance. However, for a male leader bonus allocation reflects the romance of leadership such that improved company performance leads to increased perceived charisma, increased leadership ability, and a larger bonus. Practical implications for the gender pay gap are discussed. Cet article élargit les recherches antérieures sur la romance du leadership en se demandant si celle-ci vaut aussi pour bien les femmes que pour les hommes et en étudiant l’impact de la romance du leadership sur la rémunération liée à la performance. Une étude expérimentale ( N = 210) laisse entendre que la romance du leadership concerne à la fois les hommes et les femmes, mais que la procédure d’attribution du salaire diffère en fonction du genre. Pour une femme leader, l’obtention d’une prime relative à la performance découle plus de la perception de son charisme et de son aptitude au leadership que d’un lien direct avec les résultats de l’entreprise. Alors que pour un leader masculin l’attribution d’une gratification renvoie à la romance du leadership en ce sens que les performances de l’entreprise accentuent le charisme perçu et l’aptitude au leadership, puis débouchent sur une gratification plus substantielle. On réfléchit aux conséquences pratiques en ce qui concerne les différences de salaire en fonction du genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illuminates the social world of Japanese coalminers, with special attention given to women miners as told through their oral accounts and work songs, which historians have not used before. These coalmining women constituted the second largest single occupational category in the early part of the 20th century, yet they still continue to receive little scholarly attention. This investigation has led to a new concept of the world of women coalminers, the so-called 'reversible world', which operated in a specific social and economic context--the dark underground world of the mine and the light world above of conventional society. Uncovering this underground world has enormous significance in fleshing out the identity and spirit of the miners. It challenges historians' stereotypes of the miners as apolitical, apathetic and unaware of the inequities in their work situation. Mining women created their own world under the ground where normal gender roles were partially reversed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates entrepreneurial women confronted with the self-employment or business career choice. Optimistic women have a higher proclivity to be businesswomen. Businesswomen select self- over paid employment when they are young or old, less educated, married or with under-age children. There are no significant native-immigrant differences. However, among immigrant women those who are in Germany 6 to 12 years are more likely to go into self-employment. These results show that women in Germany who are in their prime working age, educated, not married, and with no under-age children are less likely to choose self-employment, as it is not viewed as a channel to achieving higher socio-economic standing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on British data from two annual sweeps of the ISSP eight years apart in 1994 and 2002, for modules focusing on ‘Family and Changing Gender Roles’, this paper examines the extent to which changes in women's labour market participation, changing ideologies/discourses of gender and changing forms of intimate relationships are affecting the ways in which couples organize household money, and the implications of such changes for recent theories of intimate relationships. The analysis indicates that by 2002, the type of relationship respondents had established, together with their social class position, were both independently related to the ways in which they managed money, after controlling for socio-economic and cultural or discursive factors. Our findings also provide a degree of support for the thesis of a partial decline in the male breadwinner model of gender, as indicated by small declines in the use of the relatively inegalitarian female whole wage and housekeeping allowance systems which were most likely to be used by married couples and cohabiting fathers, expressing relatively traditional ideologies/discourses of breadwinning – and a slight increase in the use of the partial pool, which was most likely to be used by childless cohabiting couples in which male partners expressed less traditional ideologies of breadwinning and women were in middle-class jobs with incomes high enough to facilitate partially separate finances. We also suggest, however, that in so far as cohabiting couples earning different amounts define equality as contributing equally to household expenditure, it is possible that rather than being associated with shifts to greater equality in access to money for personal spending and saving, the partial pool may be associated with marked inequalities, because it may enable gender inequalities generated in the labour market to be more directly transposed into inequalities within households, despite the decline of traditional discourses of male breadwinning and the increasing importance of egalitarian ideologies of co-provisioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]