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In the binary sex-segregated space of professional sports, sex-gender diversity is met with suspicion, derision and exclusion. In the United States, along with widespread anti-trans policies at various societal levels, legislations and regulations are being pushed to limit or eliminate transgender athletes from competing in all levels of sports. However, little scholarship has considered the implications of the presence of nonbinary athletes, those who identify outside the spectrum of man and woman, beyond the conversation of a ‘third gender’ category in sport. In this chapter, I seek to examine how nonbinary athletes embody disobedience by challenging the binary categorization of sex-gender within professional sports. I explore the racialized embodiment of sex and gender in professional women's sports, specifically WNBA player Layshia Clarendon. I explore how disobedience is employed to incite resistance against the narrow sex-gender categories that are forced upon athletes. Finally, I argue that embodied disobedience provides a key pathway for nonbinary athletes to undermine the regulatory nature of sex-gender categorization in sport. Particularly, nonbinary athletes may seek medical and social forms of gender affirmation, while simultaneously embodying disobedience by continuing to actively participate in professional sports categories in which they may not neatly fit.

The mental health and well-being of employees is negatively impacted by stress, anxiety and depression. There is a need to address these issues at an organisational level to enhance workforce welfare and to decrease the number of days lost due to mental health/well-being concerns. This study aimed to evaluate a mental health and well-being toolkit designed to enhance the resilience, coping and self-talk of employees.

The intervention was derived from counselling psychology and composed of an 8-hour programme, which was delivered over four consecutive weeks. A mixed methods approach was adopted, with the quantitative element assessing an intervention group (n = 10) and control group (n = 14) at baseline and at the end of the programme on measures of mental health and well-being. The qualitative aspect of the study involved interviews with the intervention group, which were thematically analysed..

Quantitatively, the experimental group showed statistically significant improvements in elements of resilience and well-being and a reduction in stress and anxiety. Qualitatively, participants experienced a positive effect on their well-being, benefited from the learning process, applied the taught strategies widely and found the session experience positive.

This was a small pilot study, nevertheless, the mixed methods nature of this investigation indicates that a counselling derived online training programme can enhance the well-being of employees within large organisations.

A remotely delivered mental health and well-being toolkit could be a useful resource to enhance the well-being of employees in all organisations.

This chapter challenges middle-class bias in work-life literature by examining work-life balance dynamics through a social class perspective. It reveals class-based disparities in physical, temporal, and psychological outcomes, including the role of economic capital in work-life balance and the challenges encountered by the socially mobile in achieving psychological balance. It emphasizes the need to acknowledge social class implications for work-life balance and urges organizations to address class-based inconsistencies and inequalities in their practices.

This paper explores employee experiences of induction in the Big Four accountancy firms to understand how induction influences new recruits' career aspirations.

Using Bourdieusian sociology, this article adopts an interpretivist multi-method approach through focus groups and semi-structured interviews with 28 newly appointed accounting professionals. The study defines newly appointed as those who have experienced induction within the last two years of their employment.

The study's findings challenge the authenticity of induction from a shared employee consensus. It cites contagious spin, regarding career progression opportunities espoused during induction, at odds with the reality of work, ultimately contributing towards unfulfilled employee aspiration. As current strategies suggest that the intersection between employee aspiration and employer provision in the accountancy profession, is too broad, this study argues for more collaborative inductions. In addition, it proposes that accountancy firms should re-evaluate their current strategies and co-construct more authentic inductions that benefit all stakeholders to develop a stronger psychological contract that positively influences employee aspiration.

The paper posits action-learning as a solution to address employee aspiration in induction campaigns in the accountancy profession.

As aspiration is the genesis of motivation and engagement, this study’s findings suggest that the use of an action-learning ethos in induction activities may provide an opportunity to explore the complexities of employee socialisation and provide a voice to new recruits attempting to influence any tensions or disappointment that may arise, as unmet career aspirations emerge.

The paper posits action learning as a solution to address employee aspiration in induction campaigns in the accountancy profession.

This chapter focuses on exploring challenges encountered by the neglected group of employees who live alone and do not have children, particularly in relation to work-life balance (WLB). We first question the conventional WLB discourse – predominately surrounded by addressing work-family conflicts. We next discuss how this formulates debates about the equality and fairness of HR policies affecting various groups of employees, with solo-living individuals being excluded. In addition to previously documented work-life issues, we articulate difficulties related to the pursuit of independence, freedom, balancing, and healthy work-life experiences for and specific to solo-living women academics. We conclude that our insights on “vulnerability” may lead to feminist approach being incorporated into work-life policy development in order to better engage underrepresented groups of employees, accommodate the needs of “others” and promote collective flourishing.

Chronic illnesses often go unnoticed mainly due to their invisibility and lack of understanding both at home and in the workplace. In this chapter, I use an autoethnographic approach to engage with my “emotionally charged” lived experiences of living and working with a stigmatized chronic illness – irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) – in a highly patriarchal Pashtun society where women are expected to perform various social roles despite of illness and are often silenced to male domination. IBS is a functional gastrointestinal disorder characterized by abdominal pain, abnormal bowel function, and bloating, in the absence of any structural abnormalities, and has a significant impact on one’s life. As I navigate through my experiences of suffering from a chronic illness and the emotional labor involved therein, I shed light on the challenges I face as a woman in managing work and life and as I silence my pain and emotions to fit into the roles of a “professional” academic, a “good” wife, a “good” daughter, a “good” sister-in-law, a “good” daughter-in-law, and so forth. I have used both the lens of stigma to reflect my sufferings and normalization to demonstrate my resilience and (re)adjustment to the new life. In doing so, pain and emotions do leak out during intense situations but silencing chronic illness is mostly strategic as it protects us from being excluded, marginalized, and stigmatzed both at work and home.

In this chapter, we discuss menopause transition in the workplace and its implications for workplace well-being. This is an important work-life interface topic, given the increasing number of women who will work during transition. It is also a topic that we currently know relatively little about, particularly in relation to well-being. We present findings that demonstrate both that many women experience symptoms that are bothersome at work and that these frequently have negative effects for two elements of workplace well-being, job satisfaction and health well-being. We evidence that individual/job characteristics and workplace context can either improve or worsen experiences of transition symptoms and make recommendations on how organization and HR practice can be designed to support women in menopause transition. We argue that working with line managers to create a more supportive context is one of the most important strategies to implement. Our research is situated in the UK police service and has wider relevance across the Global North, where similar demographic patterns are experienced, and in other male-dominated organizations and sectors.

This chapter discusses work-life interface (WLI) issues for migrant-citizen older British women of South Asian heritage living in the UK. It shows how WLI issues are inevitably entangled with the active ageing agenda for the older workforce and that we need further attention from scholars exploring these issues across life courses to appreciate and understand how ageing across locations, times and contexts unveils unique aspects of WLI. The chapter discussion rethinks some of the existing constructs of WLI and introduces new ones to its periphery, including people’s social identities and the spatio-temporal nature of those identities. Such a rethinking process is supported by critical empirical evidence on the lived experiences of a group of older ethnic minority British women living in Greater Manchester, UK, who juggled between work and caring throughout their lives, and abruptly quit paid work due to unmanageable overlapping demands. The evidence indicates how migrant women from the global south struggle to navigate UK WLI norms/culture and their meanings, especially when irreconcilable differences exist between the community/family norms and the social norms in the host country. The chapter findings have implications for the future of an inclusive labor market as it recommends early planning, provisioning and addressing ageing migrants’ WLI issues to draw sustainable/inclusive future labor market policies.