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The purpose of this paper is to provide a snapshot of secondary school food policy (SSFP) across the devolved nations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) to offer insights into a growing area of policy concern. The selected context of research is school food policy (SFP), an area of research which has received little attention in terms of policy approaches. The review is focused on 2010 to 2022.

This work combines interdisciplinary perspectives spanning across food policy, public health, psychology, education and sociology. This combination has merit as it offers different perspectives in terms of understanding SFP. The study was conducted between August 2021 and March 2022, using a desk-based review, analysing policies on food in secondary schools. Data collection was conducted through the Web using key search terms. The READ (Read, Extract, Analyse, Distil) approach was used as a systematic procedure to analyse policy and evaluation documents.

To all levels of government, it is recommended that a coherent policymaking approach be used to tackle SSFP improvements, to progress a whole school approach to food, supported by long-term dedicated resources while engaging children in SSFP development. For education departments, it is recommended that a food curriculum review, connected to school meals alongside a refocus on school food standards monitoring and reporting is crucial in serving the future generations. The current economic crisis has had an impact on public spending. Universal Free School Meals has been said to make an enormous difference to well-being.

The current findings suggest that researching SFP across nations has merit. There is a relative lack of focus on secondary schools, in light of England’s focus on the National Food Strategy (focus on children), post-pandemic, economic crisis – together this makes school food and food policy a topic of real urgency and importance. Lessons can both be learned, particularly in promoting healthier and more educationally inclusive school food practices. Research in this area can inform curriculum design and school food environment and system changes from the perspective of learnings around taking a whole school food approach to education.

This study aims to investigate whether social investment (SI) policies improve employment among single mothers.

This paper analyzes the potential effects of SI policies on vulnerable individuals and workers at the macro level by using the employment position of single mothers as a dependent variable. Time-series cross-national data from 18 OECD countries between 1998 and 2017 are analyzed. Multilevel model analysis is also used for robustness check.

I find that public spending on education and family support is positively associated with the employment rates of single mothers. In contrast, active labor market policy (ALMP) spending is negatively associated. ALMP’s negative effects stand out particularly with public spending on job training. Of all family support policies, family allowances are positively associated with single mothers’ employment, which runs counter to the conventional argument that family allowances are a disincentive for women’s or mothers’ employment. Paid leave (length and generosity) is also associated with higher employment for single mothers. There is also some tentative evidence that public spending on maternity leave benefits (spending level) may raise the odds of single mothers being employed, when individual-level factors are controlled for in multilevel analysis we implement for robustness check.

This paper does not analyze the effects of the qualitative properties of SI policies. Future research is necessary in this respect.

The effects of SI policies on employment among single mothers have not yet been examined in the literature. This paper seeks to be a first cut at measuring the effects.

Many veterans struggle with the civilian world and the loss of identity associated with leaving the service. This research investigates the Building Heroes Charity's role in assisting service leavers transitioning to civil employment, in the United Kingdom (UK) and what can be learnt from the training and support.

An exploratory case study design was chosen to investigate the transition from military to civilian employment. The case study consisted of 12 in-depth interviews consisting of nine veterans, who had attended the Building Heroes courses and three course tutors.

The Building Heroes Charity does have an important role to fulfill in the transition of military personnel from the service to civilian work. There are positive outcomes that complement the work done by the Career Transition Partnership (CTP), but there still needs to be recognition that the needs of veterans do differ by age, transferability of competencies and the financial resources available.

The limitations of this research are the sample size is small and the majority of the veterans are from the Army. This is mostly because the Army is the largest of the services.

Though there is limited research into the employment of veterans, there is evidence to demonstrate that veterans are more likely to suffer from depression and potential homelessness than nonservice personnel. This research is unique in investigating the role of a charity whose main purpose is to improve the employability of veterans by reducing the competency skills gap between the military and construction industry.

Mainland Tanzania has seen two decades of significant social policy reforms and transformations in its social and economic structures, whilst the country continues to grapple with persisting gender inequalities. This article examines Tanzania's social policy developments from a gender perspective. The authors analyse the level, reach and quality of social policy delivery to working-age women across the areas of health policy, social protection and employment policy during 2000–2021.

The article draws on qualitative research deploying the scoping review method. The data consist of diverse secondary materials, including academic publications, government policy documents, relevant statistics and other types of “grey” literature.

Tanzania has made significant advancements in the legal frameworks around welfare provision and has instituted increasingly gender-responsive government policy plans. The health and social protection sectors, in particular, have witnessed the introduction of large-scale measures expanding social policy implementation. However, social policy delivery remains two-tiered, with differences in provisions for women in the formal and informal sectors.

Social policy delivery and implementation have increased and diversified in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) during the new millennium, with a growing integration of gender-specific policy objectives. However, limited social policy scholarship has focused on the gendered effects of broader social policy models in SSA. The article remedies the concomitant knowledge gaps by examining various social policies and their impacts on working-age women in Mainland Tanzania. The authors also engage with the theoretical welfare regime literature and present an analytical framework for gender-sensitive assessment of emerging social policy models in the Global South.

The operational framework of external financing in the correlation between the gender of entrepreneurs and firm performance remains to be resolved. This study aims to investigate the mediating effect of external financing on gender-based disparities in private firm performance and to explore its heterogeneity within the Chinese context.

Based on national data from the 10th to 13th Chinese Private Enterprise Survey, this study used a bootstrap-based mediation effect model to analyze the role of external financing as a mediator in the relationship between entrepreneur gender and firm performance.

This study found that external financing is a constructive mediator between entrepreneur gender and firm performance. Heterogeneity analysis revealed that external financing plays a complementary mediation role in the impact of entrepreneur gender on performance in West China. In the tertiary industry, external financing acts as the sole mediator for the impact of gender on firm performance. Notably, this mediating effect is present in non-startups but not in startups.

The findings suggest that external financing can improve the firm performance of female entrepreneurs. Governments and policymakers should strengthen financial support for female entrepreneurs in West China, tertiary industry and non-startup enterprises.

This paper contributes to the literature on gender and corporate governance by shedding light on the mediating role of external financing in the relationship between the gender of business owners and firm performance.

Female entrepreneurship discussions will broaden and diversify as a result of global shifts. Studies of female entrepreneurship must take into account differences between male and female entrepreneurs due to the historical, cultural and social specificity of developing countries to narrow gender gaps, identify barriers, fine-tune support systems, release dormant potential and provide information for policymaking. This paper aims to measure and estimate the most crucial socioeconomic characteristics that Southeast Asian countries leverage to advance women’s business initiatives.

Using a panel data model whereby the Female Entrepreneurship Indicator Score serves as the dependent variable and the ten most important socioeconomic indicators serve as the independent variables. Ten southeast Asian countries are analyzed using the panel fixed effects approach of Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MM-QR) from 1980 to 2021.

It has been found by empirical panel quantile regression using the MM-QR method that the following indicators positively affect female entrepreneurship in southeast Asian countries: the assets indicator, the pay indicator, the workplace indicator, the mobility indicator and the a woman can sign a contract in the same way as a man indicator. But the parenthood indicator, the unemployment indicator, the school enrollment indicator, the men and women have equal ownership rights to immovable property indicator and the marriage indicator all have negative effects.

This paper uses a new method called MM-QR to look at how the most important socioeconomic factors affect female entrepreneurship in Southeast Asian countries. The results obtained will also add to and broaden the small amount of research that has been done on female entrepreneurs in developing countries.

The high and persistent unemployment rates of people with intellectual disabilities (PwID) reveal the wide gap that still remains to be bridged. Entrepreneurship combinedly with a high enterprising tendency could improve PwID's life satisfaction.

A mixed-method approach was used, based on questionnaires and structured face-to-face interviews on 37 PwID who had recently become entrepreneurs. Data were firstly quantitatively analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), and qualitative data were used to enable robust findings.

The entrepreneurial tendency of PwID who had recently become entrepreneurs was found to be a positive to their life quality (LQ), job satisfaction and life satisfaction.

This study revealed that entrepreneurship among PwID who had high enterprising tendency enhances their LQ, job satisfaction and life satisfaction. However, further research could evaluate whether becoming an entrepreneur is in itself enough to change PwID's life to better, such that a comparison could be done between PwID who become entrepreneurs and PwID who have a salaried job.

New aspects in the design of public social policies to improve PwID's life satisfaction are suggested. These include the facilitation of both entrepreneurship and enterprising tendency for PwID to enhance their life satisfaction.

There are very few occasions in which PwID set up businesses. This is one of the first studies to analyze the benefit of entrepreneurship and enterprising tendency on the LQ, the satisfaction at work and the life satisfaction of PwID.

We enquire whether short-time work (STW) avoids firings as intended by policymakers and is associated with unintended side effects by subsidising some establishments and locking in some employees. Additionally, where it was feasible, establishments used working from home (WFH) to continue working without risking an increase in COVID-19 infections and allowing employed parents to care for children attending closed schools.

Using 21 waves of German high-frequency establishment panel data collected during the COVID-19 crisis, we investigate how STW and WFH are associated with hirings, firings, resignations and excess labour turnover (or churning).

Our results show the important influences of STW and working from home on employment dynamics during the pandemic. By means of STW, establishments are able to avoid an increase in involuntary layoffs and hiring decreases significantly. In contrast, WFH is associated with a rise in resignations, as can be expected from a theoretical perspective.

While most of the literature on STW and WFH is unrelated and remains descriptive, we consider them in conjunction and conduct panel data analyses. We apply data and methods that allow for the dynamic pattern of STW and working from home during the pandemic. Furthermore, our data include relevant establishment-level variables, such as the existence of a works council, employee qualifications, establishment size, the degree to which the establishment was affected by the COVID-19 crisis, industry affiliation and a wave indicator for the period the survey was conducted.