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Against the recent reversal of the gender gap in higher education that has been observed in many countries, this paper aims to explore why there are better chances for lower social class women to access higher education than for higher social class women in a relative comparison with the same groups of men. Based on the occupational approach and the Breen–Goldthorpe model, we demonstrate those country conditions under which stratification in individual chances to obtain higher education is more severe.

We use contextual characteristics which capture gender-based and occupational differentiation, including female labour force participation, the share of females in the service sector, and the share of males in upper-secondary vocational education. By using multilevel modelling techniques and data provided by the European Social Survey (2002–2018) for 33 countries, we have made a cross-country analysis of how the relationship between gender and class, as well as the achievement of higher education, is moderated by these features.

Our results show that a higher share of males in upper secondary vocational education in a given country is negatively associated with the likelihood of obtaining higher education, whereas a high share of females employed in services in a given country has a positive association with this likelihood. We have also found cross-level interactions between a higher share of employed females and women in the service sector, on the one hand, and those of working-class origin, on the other, that are positively associated with higher education achievement. In higher education achievement, the growing importance of horizontal differentiation based on occupation and gender has accompanied the declining power of vertical inequality based on social class.

This study combines gender and class in an analysis of patterns of inequalities of educational opportunity in different societies undergoing a post-industrialist shift.

Despite the great technological, economic, and social advances and the significant progress achieved by women from the last century until today, there is still a clear division between men and women in the labor market: more women are working, but their salaries are lower, as are their positions and their possibility of full development is reduced.

The gender problem is global, which forces the business sector, as one of the main agents of the market, to build policies around gender equality and the recognition of women as agents who generate growth and economic and business development. In this sense, business projects that seek to reduce gender gaps also impact the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), because they increase opportunities for equity, freedom, and dignity, for men and women in equal conditions.

What are the challenges and opportunities in gender equity presented by economic analyses in Colombia in a Latin American context?

According to the question, a Latin American economic context of gender gaps is presented, from the perspective of socioeconomic inequality and poverty, sexual division of labor, patriarchal cultural patterns, and concentration of power. Similarly, the effects of the pandemic on women’s employment and income are reviewed. When talking about gender gaps and professional contribution to the economy, it is not only a solution to inequalities, it is analytically undoing this cultural conception to give it a new structure of dominance.

There is a lack of conversation about economics and gender because the analysis is found from a macroeconomic perspective when writing that regardless of who performs care work or domestic work can also question the assumptions of economic science that, by convention, in national accounts, it ignores the value of domestic work and almost always deals with scarcity, selfishness, and competition, and rarely of abundance, altruism, and cooperation.

It must be recognized that the COVID-19 pandemic gave importance to childcare for national economies in general and women’s economic participation in particular, which has stimulated a renewed interest in childcare policy in many countries that have implemented lockdowns, as well as women, who provided most of the unpaid care, not only did they lose income due to demands for care but also they struggled to access needs, with some reporting increased personal insecurity.

The economic crises of the last century reflected recessions that had a greater impact on the employment of men since they are usually employed in sectors where employment tends to be unstable or as the economy is called cyclical employment. However, in the crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic, given their particular conditions, it is women who are mainly affected.

Challenges and opportunities in terms of gender equity present economic analyses in Colombia in a Latin American context, in this context, it is reviewed: the national survey of time use and its findings; the incorporation of the care economy in the measurement of economic growth and poverty indicators by gender and its effects on improvements in the quality of life of the population and its impact on the economy.

Among the advantages of incorporating the gender perspective in the economic analysis, the following perspectives are analyzed:

• The similarities of the experiences of the gender gap and its effect on the economy suggest that the response of public policies of recovery and preparedness with the corresponding recognition, women absorb the costs of care work, with possible long-term negative effects on health, and well-being.

• A greater stimulus to growth, as women bring new skills to work, productivity, and growth gains from greater female participation in the labor force. And, greater productivity and reducing gender barriers.

The similarities of the experiences of the gender gap and its effect on the economy suggest that the response of public policies of recovery and preparedness with the corresponding recognition, women absorb the costs of care work, with possible long-term negative effects on health, and well-being.

A greater stimulus to growth, as women bring new skills to work, productivity, and growth gains from greater female participation in the labor force. And, greater productivity and reducing gender barriers.

This study aims to investigate the gender diversity within innovation and entrepreneurship teams and the perceptions of gender imbalance in digital skills among team members in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian country belonging to the Global South.

Primary data were collected from ten leading firms in Kazakhstan's manufacturing, construction and oil and gas sectors, which have international connections or perspectives. The members of the research and development (R&D) departments of these firms completed an online, structured closed-question questionnaire anonymously. A total of 169 completed responses were analyzed using regression analysis, controlling for company size and sector, with gender as the independent variable.

The gender diversity within innovation teams is not as high as anticipated, even though there is a substantial representation of women in the scientific workforce across many firms. Similarly, there is a gender gap in entrepreneurship teams involved in business innovation, although it is slightly less pronounced. Female employees report a greater disparity compared to their male counterparts. Surprisingly, over 60% of both male and female respondents agree that women lack the same level of digital expertise and knowledge as men.

The findings of this research should be interpreted in light of the fact that they are based on a perception-based survey. Local firms exhibit skepticism toward external researchers due to privacy concerns, making their participation challenging. However, it is noteworthy that the survey targeted front-line workers in the innovation and entrepreneurship field, providing informed perspectives that strengthen the study's outcomes.

This study reveals that while women form a considerable proportion the scientific workforce, gender diversity in innovation and entrepreneurship teams is lacking in a Global South country. Gender imbalance in innovation and entrepreneurship is thus present in both developing and developed countries, highlighting the need for interventions to promote gender diversity at the firm level.

The attention of scholars and policy makers towards the topic of innovation has consistently increased, especially in recent years. This is justified by the fact that innovation undoubtedly plays, today, a crucial role in driving a country’s economic growth, improving productivity and, more generally, enhancing overall societal well-being.

When the discourse around innovation focuses on its economic dimension, the strong intertwinement with entrepreneurship emerges. In line with this, focusing on research on innovation in organisations and, especially, innovation in relation to the figure of the entrepreneur is considered, plenty of studies have been carried on, over time, in many disciplines, analysing the role of the entrepreneur in relation to innovation from various different angles. However, especially when management studies are considered, we can notice a poor consideration of the role played by the gender of the entrepreneur. In line with this consideration, by means of a systematic literature review, this chapter aims to fill this literature gap focusing on the intertwinement that can be envisaged, in management studies, among the issues of entrepreneurship and innovation in the case of women-owned firms.

This paper aims to understand the involvement of women in white-collar crime (WCC) also referred to as pink-collar crimes. WCC is present around the globe and has created a word for itself.

The paper is designed by studying the WCC in the area of Iran, Portugal, Norway, India and the USA.

The paper attempts to move beyond the traditional perspectives of emancipation versus focal concern, which argue that less inequality will increase women involvement in WCC versus women socializing into accepting responsibilities for social concerns by caring for others.

As the data is restricted, this study is based on the limited data available on the internet.

This paper is an original work of the authors.

For almost half a century, society has been aware of the existence of a glass ceiling, a term that describes the invisible barriers that hinder women’s access to power positions despite having equal or greater qualifications, skills and merits than their male counterparts. Nowadays, although there are signs of slow progress, women are still underrepresented in the upper echelons of large corporations and the risk of reversing the progress made in gender parity has increased because of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper contributes to previous literature by analysing the impact that the uncertainty and cognitive effects associated with COVID-19 in 2020 had on the presence of women on the board of directors and whether this impact has been moderated by the regulatory and policy system on gender quotas in place at the time.

To test the authors' research hypotheses, the authors selected the major global companies worldwide with economic-financial and non-financial information available in the Thomson Reuters EIKON database over the 2015–2020 period. As a result, the authors' final sample is made up of 1,761 companies from 52 countries with different institutional settings that constitute an unbalanced data panel of 8,963 observations. The nature of the dependent variables requires the use of logistic regressions. The models incorporate the terms to control for any unobservable heterogeneity and the error term. Any endogeneity issues were addressed by considering the explanatory variables with a time lag.

The authors find that almost 30% of the companies downsized their boards in 2020. This decision resulted in more female than male directors being made redundant, causing a reversal in the fulfilment of gender quotas focussed on ensuring balanced boards with a female presence of 40% or more. This effect was enhanced in countries with hard-law regulation because the penalty for non-compliance with gender quotas had led to a significant increase in the size of these bodies in previous years through the inclusion of the required number of female directors. In contrast, the reduction in board size in soft-law countries does not differ from that in laissez-faire countries, lacking any moderating effect or impact on the number of female board members dismissed as a result of the pandemic.

This paper aims to contribute to current knowledge by analysing the impact that the countries' regulatory and normative systems on gender parity on boards of directors have had on the decisions made in relation to leadership positions, moderating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender equality at a global level.

The proposal takes as a reference of the post-pandemic context corresponding to Cuba, likewise, it includes experiences from Peru and Argentina, mainly in the field of education. In the epistemic order, enclaves of the theory of culture in its humanist aspect corresponding to cultural identity were adopted. Methodologically, we adhere to the critical interpretative paradigm, integrating results of the authors’ social practice and critical review of sources, mainly contributions from critical theory. The exposed analyses contribute to base theoretical-methodological criteria aimed at reducing gender and racial gaps, and other inequalities determined by conditions that historically become inequities in access to development. Political theoretical criteria are proposed for the implementation of inclusive public policies in the area of education and productive activity, overcoming gender, and racial gaps in the post-pandemic context. As a result, it contributes to promoting the overcoming of the effects of racism and sexism in the pandemic context as well as enabling the development of cultural identity from actions aimed at the cultural integration of identity expressions neglected due to racial and gender conditions. As a result, it contributes to promote the overcoming of the effects of racism and sexism in the pandemic context; as well as to enable the development of cultural identity from actions aimed at the cultural integration of identity expressions neglected due to racial and gender conditions.

Given the adversity of the COVID-19 pandemic, there remains an incomplete understanding of the gender disparities in the affectedness and recovery of micro-entrepreneurs from the crisis. Consequently, this paper aims to scrutinise gender disparities in the initial repercussions of the crisis and throughout the recovery phase.

Acknowledging the interconnectedness of micro-entrepreneurs’ professional and private spheres, the study adopts a mixed-methods approach combining a representative quantitative study with qualitative data from 36 semi-structured interviews with self-employed individuals in Germany amidst the COVID-19 crisis.

The findings indicate a gender gap in the impact and recovery trajectory, particularly affecting female entrepreneurs in caregiving roles beyond immediate financial repercussions. These disparities did not result in more pronounced business measures for recovery but rather involved more experimentation and prosocial behaviours, with a preference for alternatives to state aid, such as personal reserves and social networks.

Unveiling the dual influence of economic and social factors as essential for female entrepreneurs’ recovery from the crisis adds to the literature by providing a comprehensive understanding of gender-specifics.

As women’s position in the economy and society is often explained by cultural factors, this study aims to verify whether the observed changes in female empowerment in the region of Central and East European (CEE) countries of the European Union (EU) are associated with masculinity as a cultural trait.

The authors apply the k-means clustering method to group CEE countries into clusters with similar levels of female empowerment in two time points – 2013 and 2019. Next, the authors examine the clusters and cross-reference them with the national culture’s masculinity to explore the interrelations between female empowerment and cultural traits in the CEE countries and their development in time.

The analyses reveal that female empowerment is not uniform or stable across the CEE countries. The masculinity level is not strongly related to women’s position in these countries, and changes in female empowerment are not closely linked to masculinity.

Despite the tumultuous history of women’s empowerment in the CEE countries, the issues related to gender equality and cultural traits pertaining to the region are relatively understudied in the literature. By focusing on the CEE region, the authors fill the gap in examining the independencies between female empowerment and cultural masculinity.