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Despite the growing global interest in promoting rural development as a strategy to guarantee food security, in developing countries there are large gaps to achieve a sustainable countryside, mainly in rural areas. This research work delves into a methodological approach definition to establish the baseline for the public policy implementation and prioritize the intervention needs in the different items considered in an integral rural development public policy. The proposed methodology combines a qualitative characterization of needs and goals, a social cartography, a quantitative characterization of indicators and the use of multicriteria classification for prioritizing development policies. Eight localities with sixteen small rural settlements are taken as a research unit, to apply the proposed methodology and determine the implementation level of a public policy. The results show that a set of priority policies that both meet the authorities' objectives and the population's needs can be defined. Moreover, a vector of priority is proposed to define the weakest items, as a guide to local government administrations to focus efforts on interventions to achieve greater impacts on the rural community development under study. Finally, via a double field validity assessment, those strategic lines are hierarchized and analyzed regarding their potential relationships, as a social system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into gender dynamics in the Public Relations (PR) industry has suggested that the gendered perceptions of PR roles, gender bias, and cultural norms may contribute to gender-related issues in the field. The current study, framed as an exploratory investigation, examines how PR professionals in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) perceive gender equality issues within their industry. Drawing on survey responses from 152 PR practitioners in the UAE, this research investigates the extent to which these professionals perceive gender equality issues in the PR sector. The survey results reveal positive perceptions of gender equality issues, although some specific gender-related concerns emerge. One key finding is that there are minimal gender differences in perceiving gender equality issues between male and female professionals. Respondents also expressed confidence that their organizations are implementing practices in support of gender equality and recognizing the impact of such practices on employee performance. Given the lack of data on gender equality in the UAE, this exploratory study contributes to a better understanding of gender equality among professionals and provides insights into the strategies for advancing gender equality in the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Austerity measures are commonly adopted to address economic crises. Such measures have particularly adverse effects for women, but studies have found these consequences to be strategically silenced. I explore the conditions under which the gendered effects of austerity are silenced, and by whom. Drawing on an original dataset of 9,420 newspaper articles (2010–2020) addressing austerity measures introduced in Spain, I find that politicians from left parties critique the labor reforms for negatively affecting women's working conditions, while conservative politicians rarely address the reforms from a gender perspective. The party political difference is conditioned by government–opposition dynamics, and the salience of gender perspectives varies with election cycles. These findings suggest that a gender lens is more likely to be present in the public debate on economic policy-making when it is strategically beneficial for garnering political support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paid domestic workers are commonly excluded from general labor laws across the globe. This article unpacks the ideological structure underlying the legitimation of this widespread exclusion and how it is shifting. I examine transcripts of official debates in the International Labour Organization 1919–2014 and in Spain 1978–2018 that deal with how paid domestic work is treated in general labor regulations. I show that justifications for limiting domestic workers' labor rights have shifted from using the separate spheres framework to leveraging notions of racialized hierarchies of skill that perpetuate the devaluation of domestic work despite offering greater recognition of labor rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many European countries have implemented policies to revive their domestic service sectors. A common goal of these reforms has been to create employment for disadvantaged groups on the domestic labor market. I evaluate a Swedish policy where domestic service firms receive a 50% tax deduction on labor costs. Detailed data from tax records identify all formal workers and owners of firms that receive deductions. I describe the composition of workers and owners in these firms with respect to three groups targeted by Swedish policymakers: refugees, people with low education, and people who enter the workforce from long-term unemployment. I find that the shares of refugees and long-term unemployed in the subsidized sector barely exceed the shares in the full private labor force, and fall far below the shares in industrial sectors with a predominance of elementary jobs. The share of people with low education is higher than in the full private sector and on par with other low-skilled sectors. I conclude that the tax subsidy largely failed to improve employment opportunities among the target groups. An extended analysis suggests that labor immigration from other EU countries may be a partial explanation for this. EU immigrants operate half of all subsidized firms in Sweden's largest cities and nearly exclusively employ other EU immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the future development of a high-quality, user-driven elderly care system and efforts to ensure sufficient labour supply and job quality in this sector, it is important to analyse the sector from the perspective of both service users and service providers. The article aims to reveal the controversy between the demand for eldercare services, which reflects preference for informal care and home help services, and the challenge of securing quality jobs for care sector's employees. Expectations of potential service users with regard to care services in Lithuania indicate a need for developing various employment models, including non-standard forms of employment, in order to ensure better access for the elderly to in-home services. On the other hand, taking into account the problem of the quality of jobs, the article considers not only the preconditions for developing the service system itself, but also the issues of job quality within the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first quantitative comparative study that examines the relationship between paid domestic labor and precarious employment on the microlevel. Using the Luxembourg Income Study 2013/2014, it shows that across welfare regimes, domestic workers have a higher probability of working in precarious employment settings compared to other industries. Furthermore, the overlaps of two or more precarious employment settings are significantly more common in domestic work than among other industries in all countries examined. This is an important finding as it proves the high insecurity of the formal domestic labor industry even in countries with specific regulations regarding domestic work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A special employment regulation excludes domestic workers in the Netherlands from most social and employment protection. Using a process tracing method, this article assesses why such an exclusionary policy has persisted in an otherwise inclusive welfare state. Going beyond the narrow class-based focus of dualization research, the article develops a framework for understanding the politics of differentiation by taking into account how intersecting social divisions based on class, gender, and citizenship shape political representation and ideas about legitimate inequalities. These intersecting social divisions explain why even potential political allies have not given priority to improving domestic workers' rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses policymaking from a gender+ equality perspective. It connects the knowledge from various subfields ranging from development planning, to feminist policy studies, to works on gender mainstreaming. By connecting different but convergent feminist subdisciplines, it draws a picture of the field of gender+ and policymaking. Central in this analysis are the questioning of gender+ bias in the policy process and the development of strategies to mainstream gender into policymaking. By delineating the boundaries of research on gender and policymaking, the article addresses existing challenges and reflects on gaps and promising terrains of study that could further develop and establish the field of feminist policy studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explains why the outsourcing of domestic household tasks is more prevalent in some OECD countries than in others by examining the effects of country-level labor market characteristics. This paper uses micro-level data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), "Family and Gender Roles III" (2002 module) to carry out a two-level analysis on a sample of 22 countries. The paper examines the effects of both individual-and national level factors that might affect a couple's decision to outsource house cleaning to someone outside of the family. The paper finds that, in addition to individual level variables such as education and household income, the percentage of low skill immigrants in the country affects the likelihood of outsourcing house cleaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the theme of the special issue on Outsourcing Domestic (Care) Work. We conceptualize "outsourcing of domestic work" as a process by which both the state and family increase their reliance on private markets to carry out both care and non-care domestic services. We argue that this outsourcing is happening in response to three "deficits" that many wealthy European countries face-"care deficit," "time deficit", and "job deficit." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Spain and Canada were pursuing divergent political agendas before the 2007- 09 global economic crisis and subsequent recession: Canada's conservative government, elected in 2006, had begun reducing the size of government by slashing revenues, while Spain's social democratic government (2004-11) aimed to increase social inclusion and gender equality. Using women's shares of market (labor and capital) incomes and after-tax incomes as equality indicators, this study analyzes the probable gender impact of each country's policies during the global economic crisis. The authors find that, although both countries were signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979; CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), neither lived up to these commitments to undertake gender- based analyses when developing crisis interventions; but if Spain's policies had been maintained, they would have had less damaging effects on women in the long term than those implemented in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]