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The purpose of this paper is to analyze data from the first-ever national-level study of informal work in the USA to test two prominent points of focus in the literature: how participation in informal work relates to social embeddedness and formal labor supply. This paper also provides a comparative test of the factors associated with exchange-based informal work (i.e. money/barter) vs self-provisioning activities.

The study draws on data from a national-level household telephone survey and uses descriptive statistics and logistic regression models.

The data show that participation in the informal economy is widespread in the USA. Consistent with theory, it is found that measures of social embeddedness and formal labor supply are much more salient for predicting participation in informal work for money/barter compared to self-provisioning.

Drawing on unique data from the first national-level household survey of informal work in the USA, this study provides generalizable support for the contention that the informal sector stands as a persistent structural feature in modern society. The results build on the wealth of information produced by qualitative case studies examining informal economic activity as well as a smaller number of regionally targeted surveys to provide important theoretical insights.

The United States has always been an outlier in its approach to social welfare and safety net provision compared to other industrial and postindustrial nations. A large literature has emerged to explain U.S. exceptionalism. Much of this theory and research centers on U.S. race relations and, more recently, on gender ideologies embedded in state policies that have fostered “poverty knowledge” and policies that emphasize individual responsibility and dependency rather than structural factors and processes that create social stigma and exclusion (O'Connor, 2001). Relatively unrecognized is the way spatial inequality shapes U.S. welfare policies. The restructuring of the welfare state by the enactment in 1996 of PRWORA, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, more familiarly known as welfare reform, highlighted the significance of spatial inequality through one of its key provisions: devolution of authority for program formation and administration to state and local jurisdictions. Devolution, a major element of neoliberal policies designed to diminish state redistributive power, places responsibility for welfare reform in local jurisdictions and agencies with varying capacities and resources for this task. Rural areas are particularly subject to disadvantage from devolution as they often lack the means to successfully implement welfare to work policies. Studies of the impacts of welfare reform using national data and crude proxies for spatial differences obscure differences in outcomes for individuals and communities that emerge when more attention is paid to spatial variation. The result is a form of extreme spatial inequality that marginalizes rural regions, communities, and their impoverished residents. This chapter examines the relationship between spatial inequality, devolution, and social exclusion for rural peoples and places in the era of welfare reform and shows how these form key elements of U.S. welfare provision. Illustrations are drawn from primary research on the impacts of welfare reform in rural Appalachia.

The aim of this paper is to examine gender role attitudes between Christian and Muslim college students towards 11 most heatedly debated cliches in Lebanon that concern equal access of men and women to political and social spheres including employment.

A three‐way MANOVA (gender by religion by class) was conducted on gender role items. Correlation of religiosity were performed between Christian and Muslim college students to explore associations between religiosity and gender role attitudes among respondents.

Main effects were found among respondents, with females consistently holding less gendered attitudes than males; hence attesting to the universality of gender role attitudinal differences. The gender by religion interaction showed that Christian respondents and Muslim females documented less “traditionally demarcated” gender roles in social and public domains than Muslim males. Furthermore, class appeared to be a weak predictor of gender beliefs compared to the impact gender and religion had on gender role attitudes. Finally, correlation results showed that religiosity was associated with traditional gender roles.

While the temptation is strong to generalize the attitudes of college students to the general public in Lebanon, the present study recognizes that its findings are only a mild reflection of gender role attitudes in Lebanon since it was exclusively limited to college students.

Comparing gender role attitudes between Lebanese Muslim and Christian college students is of particular importance to academics, public citizens and policymakers interested in the removal of gender inequalities.

Scarcely any research in the Arab World compared gender role attitudes among Arabs, particularly between Christian and Muslim samples.

The welfare state is certainly paradoxical. On the one hand, it is extraordinary mundane, concerned with the minutiae of the pension and benefit rights of millions of citizens. On the other, the sheer scale of its growth is one of the most remarkable features of the post-war capitalist world and it remains on of the dominant, if sometimes unnoticed, institutions of the modern world. (Pierson, 1998, p. 208)

This paper examines the labour demand associated with hybrid chilli adoption, a relatively labour-intensive crop in Indonesia.

Using 228 chilli producing households in West Java Province, Indonesia’s primary chilli production region, the analysis extends previous research on household labour demand by assessing the impacts of hybrid chilli seed adoption on both family and hired labour on a gender-specific basis. Instrumental variables 2SLS approach is employed to address potential endogeneity that may occur related to hybrid seed choices.

The results demonstrate that hybrid chilli seed use is more likely to increase demand for hired labour, particularly female hired labour; However, hybrid seed adoption is insignificantly associated with demand for male and female family labour.

The sample size used in this paper is relatively small; however, the sample is chosen from the biggest chilli producing area in Indonesia and can still be considered reasonably representative.

The results indicate that hybrid seed adoption creates rural employment opportunities for rural women in Indonesia, which could potentially help empower them in rural economic activities and household decision making.

This study contributes to the literature assessing modern agricultural technologies by evaluating rural employment impacts on a source- and gender-specific basis, which is much less understood. It, therefore, complements the existing knowledge regarding welfare impacts in other aspects such as poverty reduction, food security and nutrition enhancement and suggests another dimension where desirable impacts may occur through associated women’s empowerment.

This paper aims to explore ethnic minority women’s gendered perceptions and processes of agricultural innovation in the Northern uplands of Vietnam. The key research question asks how women develop innovations and learn new agricultural practices within patriarchal family structures.

In-depth interviews including life histories were conducted with 17 female and 10 male farmers from different socio-economic groups; participant observation and key informant interviews were also carried out.

Women’s innovation processes are deeply embedded in their positions as wives and daughters-in-law. Their innovation tends to be incremental, small-scale and less technological, and they use innovation networks of women rather than those of the formal agricultural institutions, including bringing innovation knowledge from their birth family to the patrilocal household. Unlike men’s perceived innovation, women’s innovation is strongly linked to small-scale entrepreneurship, and it is a powerful approach in the sense that it strengthens the position of women in their families while improving the household economy.

Identifying socially constructed innovation processes helps policymakers to rethink the introduction of ready-made innovation packages, both in terms of content and delivery, and to facilitate innovation for women, as well as men, in marginalized positions.

Understanding the gendered processes of innovation instead of measuring gender gaps in innovation outcomes sheds light on women’s interests and preferences, which can inform policies for supporting women’s innovation and thereby lead to social change, including gender equity.

This paper contributes to the understanding of gendered innovation processes and entrepreneurship associated with agriculture in rural areas in non-Western ethnic-minority contexts, which is an area that past and current research on entrepreneurship has relatively ignored.