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This chapter discusses the extension of legal equality between male and female citizens in four states in North Africa – Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria – through one specific lens: A married woman's legal capacity to initiate and obtain divorce without the husband's consent. Building on the works of Stein Rokkan and Reinhard Bendix on the expansion of citizenship to the ‘lower classes’, it is argued that amendments in divorce law by introducing in-court divorce for women, in addition to out-of-court divorce, is a significant institutional change that extends legal equality between men and women. The introduction of in-court divorce expands female citizenship by bolstering woman's juridical autonomy and capacity in state law. Changes in divorce laws are thus part of state centralization by means of standardizing rules that regulate family law through public administrative institutions rather than religious organizations. Two questions are addressed: First, how did amendments in divorce laws occur after independence? Second, in which ways did women's bolstered legal capacity in divorce have a spill over effect on reforms in other patriarchal state laws? Based on observations on sequences of change in four states in North Africa, it is argued that amendments that equalize between men and women in divorce should be seen as a key driver for reforms in other state laws, that reduce legal inequality between male and female citizens. In all four states, women's citizenship was extended in nationality law and criminal law after amendments in divorce law gave women unilateral legal power to exit a marital relationship.

Past research shows that users of smart home devices (SHDs) have privacy concerns. These concerns have been validated from technical research that shows SHDs introduce a lot of privacy risks. However, there is limited research in addressing these concerns and risks. This paper aims to bridge this gap by informing the design of data-related privacy controls for SHDs.

In this paper, the authors follow a user-centered design approach to design data-related privacy controls from design requirements backed by literature. The authors test the design for usability and perceived information control using psychometrically validated scales. For this purpose, two variations of the prototype (MyCam1 with a listing of data-related privacy controls and MyCam2 with three privacy presets) were created and tested them in a between-subjects experimental setting. Study participants (n = 207) were recruited via Mechanical Turk and asked to use the prototype app. An online survey was distributed to the participants to measure some usability and privacy-related constructs.

Findings show that the presented prototype designs were usable and met the privacy control needs of users. The prototype design with privacy presets (MyCam2) was found to be significantly more usable than the list of privacy controls (MyCam1).

The findings of this paper are original and build on the paper presented at the International Symposium on Human Aspects of Information Security and Assurance (HAISA 2022). This paper contributes improved and usable designs of privacy controls for smart home applications.

The paper aims to analyse the impact of economic and governance factors on remittance inflows to India from the UK, USA and UAE. India is globally recognised as the largest recipient of remittances.

Using a comprehensive time series data set spanning 1996 to 2022, the authors use an innovative non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model approach to examine the influence of economic growth, corruption control and employer availability in the three source countries on remittance inflows to India.

The results indicate that in the UAE, changes in economic growth and corruption control directly affect remittance outflows. However, the presence of employers in the UAE has minimal impact on remittance outflows to India. Regarding the UK, fluctuations in economic growth primarily drive remittance outflows to India. The effect of corruption control and employment opportunities on remittance outflows is marginal. In the USA, economic growth does not notably impact remittance outflows, whereas corruption control and employment opportunities significantly influence the outflows to India.

These findings have important implications for policymakers. Analysing macroeconomic factors from key remittance-sending nations offers valuable insights for Indian policymakers and their international counterparts to enhance remittance inflows. The study focuses on three countries that collectively contribute to about 50% of India's remittances, providing a unique contribution compared to the usual country-specific or regional focus in existing literature. Finally, leveraging these findings, NITI Aayog, an organisation dedicated to achieving India's sustainable development goals, can effectively monitor macroeconomic indicators related to significant remittance-sending countries.

This study aims to measure the level of satisfaction among women with childbirth services provided at public health facilities. Further, to analyse the impact of their socio-economic and obstetric characteristics on their level of satisfaction.

To accomplish these objectives a cross-sectional survey was conducted in two districts of an Indian state, Bihar. Structured questionnaire was developed based on the scale proposed by Okumu and Oyugi (2018) both for vaginal and caesarean birth patients. For empirical analysis multiple linear regression model was employed.

Results suggest that majority of mothers are satisfied with the care they received during childbirth, regardless of whether they chose a caesarean (55%) or vaginal delivery (53%). Women report the lowest levels of satisfaction with postpartum care and the privacy that was preserved by healthcare personnel at health facility. Further the study also confirms the association between patient’s socio-economic characteristics and their satisfaction level.

This is the first study of its kind to highlight the situation of public healthcare system in Bihar, which is the third most populated state in India with poor social and health indicators.

The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual framework which takes into account the perceived risk (PR) and the perceived benefits (PB) of using mobile payment systems (MPS) in the context of COVID-19 pandemic.

The study proposes a conceptual framework incorporating the uncertainties/risks associated with MPS like perceived technology uncertainty (PTU), perceived regulatory uncertainty (PRU), perceived service intangibility (PSI) and perceived information asymmetry (PIA), along with the benefits of using MPS such as trust, mobility, health consciousness (HC) and fear of Coronavirus (FOC). A survey comprising 1,253 participants was conducted in India. The proposed model was empirically examined through partial least square structural equation modelling.

The outcomes of the study revealed a significant positive influence of PTU, PRU, PIA and PSI on PR. On the other hand, HC and FOC were identified as the major antecedents having a significant positive influence on PB. Both PR and PB had a significant influence on the intention to adopt MPS, but the influence of PB was greater than the influence of PR.

The enablers and inhibitors play a crucial role in understanding the intention to adopt MPS. HC and fear of acquiring Coronavirus can be aggressively marketed by the government and service providers as a strategy to maintain social distancing. Government should address the regulatory concerns associated with the usage of MPS so as to alleviate any negative perception among the general public.

The current study is a novel attempt to understand the intention to adopt MPS in India as precautionary health behaviour to curb the transmission of Coronavirus pandemic. The study uses two constructs, HC and FOC, to better understand the behaviour of the people and explain the intention to adopt MPS during the COVID-19 pandemic.