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As women perform most household chores and other nonproductive work, gender-based division of labor in the home has now been identified as a barrier to gender equality. The objective of this study is to assess the effects of gender distribution of housework especially for women and investigate the factors influencing the total hours spent on house chores in Bangladesh.

This study adopted a quantitative approach based on survey data obtained from 200 households in the Madaripur and Gopalganj districts of Bangladesh. To analyze the obtained data, the partial least squares (PLS) regression was used.

According to this study, demographic and socioeconomic factors of women, and gender are influencing the total hours spent in housework. Women were observed to have a positive relationship with empowerment but a negative relationship with social perception. Social perception was further observed to have a significant impact on the total number of hours expended by women on house chores.

The study suggests that the importance of sharing the burden of household work be taught in schools and community-based awareness programs so that it becomes ingrained as a social and cultural practice. Furthermore, the government should conduct a proper assessment that recognizes unpaid housework by women as an important factor in inclusive sustainable development.

Issues of inequality in the division of labor in household activities are barely recognized in Bangladesh. Therefore, this study collected primary data to assess the effects of gender on the distribution of housework. The findings of the study will help policymakers and academicians to better understand the gender-based division of household labor.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2023-0195.

The purpose of this study is to explore Chinese women’s pursuit of entrepreneurship as a career choice through the intersectional lens of gender and culture. The study aims to identify factors that influenced Chinese women’s decisions to pursue entrepreneurship.

In this exploratory qualitative study, we conducted qualitative, in-depth, semi-structured and one-on-one interviews with 16 Chinese women entrepreneurs.

We identified various factors that influenced Chinese women’s career choice of entrepreneurship. The factors include entrepreneurial attributes, rapid economic growth, societal and cultural influences, the dual role of family influences and strategic entrepreneurship.

Our study provides a contextualized understanding of the experience of Chinese women’s entrepreneurship career choices. It enriches the existing literature on career choices within the career development for Chinese women entrepreneurs. By applying social cognitive career theory (SCCT) to a specific cultural and gendered setting, we proposed the social cognitive women’s entrepreneurial career theory, which offers fresh insights into the interplay of personal, contextual and behavioral dimensions in shaping Chinese women’s entrepreneurial career choices.

Despite the recognition that contextual factors play a key role in shaping individuals’ work-family (WF) interface, empirical research that simultaneously considers individual, roles and contextual factors is scarce. Drawing on the pyramid model of work-home interface, we delve into the intersection among sex, gender role ideology (GRI) and urbanization (URB) in relation to WF conflict and enrichment in India. Specifically, we explored whether and how sex (male vs female), GRI (traditional vs egalitarian) and URB (big vs small city) interact to predict WF conflict and WF enrichment.

The data were collected from 586 full-time employees working in both more and less urbanized cities in India. Moderation analyses were utilized to study the interaction effects on WF conflict and enrichment.

Results indicate that GRI is a stronger driver of WF experiences, especially WF enrichment, for women regardless of location. The study contributes to the understanding of WF experiences in India and addresses the complexity of WF experiences, especially with respect to sex and gender.

Our study offers a nuanced understanding of WF experiences in India by integrating micro- to macro-level antecedents, thereby addressing the complexity of WF experiences. While a lot of research explains sex and gender differences in WF experiences, our study highlights how these experiences vary with the degree of URB.

The purpose of this paper is to test if the digital economy improves the quality of life of our residents. Furthermore, if this finding is confirmed, what would be the mechanism behind its effect? Does the impact of the digital economy on quality of life vary according to its level of development?

A comprehensive index of the digital economy, income gap and quality of life was constructed empirically based on data from 220 cities in China from 2011–2020. A multi-dimensional empirical analysis was conducted in this paper.

The analysis of the pathways of action shows that narrowing the income gap is an important mechanism through which the digital economy actively contributes to the quality of life. The results of the threshold model show that the “marginal effect” of the digital economy on quality of life is non-linear and increasing. The results show that after a series of robustness tests, including instrumental variables, the digital economy still significantly enhances people’s quality of life.

This paper reveals the intrinsic link between the digital economy and quality of life and provides a theoretical basis for further improving people’s well-being.

Encouraging the development of the digital economy is a useful way to improve the quality of life by narrowing the income gap.

Data analysis of the digital economy from 2011–2020 in China to get an insight into what would be the mechanism behind the digital economy improving the quality of life of our residents.

This study aims to understand the social cooperative model's empowerment and social cohesion impacts based on the case of a cooperative with the partnership of local and refugee women in southern Türkiye to give evidence for the potential and challenges of women cooperatives.

The authors conducted surveys and focus group interviews with both members and board members. The authors grounded the findings in dimensions extracted from literature on the impact of cooperatives on their members and the wider community.

The social cooperative economically empowers women through employment and income generation, and skill training while enhancing them socially with increased decision-making power, autonomy, self-esteem and respect. It fosters social cohesion between local and refugee members by building trust and peace, solidarity, knowledge sharing and collective action. However, the cooperative faces challenges in managing sustainable business models, and cooperative membership does not ensure a steady income, social security, economic independence or a fairer division of domestic work.

The challenges and limited outcomes of social cooperatives are primarily due to resource scarcity. Hence, these needs must be considered by policymakers and sponsors of women empowerment programmes so that they can offer response actions to empower social women cooperatives. During the research period, the COVID-19 pandemic posed a significant threat to the survival of the cooperative. Moreover, the restrictions imposed by the pandemic made it impossible to engage Syrian women in focus group discussions. Consequently, the focus group interactions were limited to two Palestinian members, while Syrian members were included in survey interviews.

This study is one of the few attempts to examine the social cooperative model’s impact on women’s empowerment and social cohesion in the context of a mixed membership of local and refugee women in Türkiye. Fieldwork evidence on cooperatives that improve gender equality and inclusive growth can contribute to the advocacy of support for women’s cooperatives in the context of refugees.

In the M'Zab Valley, women have long remained confined to their domestic sphere and are invisible in outdoor spaces. This study aims to analyse the use of public and private spaces by the women of Ksar El Atteuf, particularly after the significant changes that society has undergone.

This study examines the role of gender in the daily life of an urban community in the M'Zab Valley in Algeria through semi-structured interviews with relevant experts and a survey of 100 Mozabite women. It focuses on their roles and views regarding using spaces and maintaining Mozabite heritage.

Social and religious norms influence women's utilisation, behaviour and roles in gendered spaces. Most women consider their place to be within the house but refuse to live primitively. Education and work have enabled them to emerge outdoors. The results also showed that owing to the restrictions imposed on women, 60% of them emphasised the need to express their opinions and make decisions, and 26% asked for more opportunities and spaces.

This study broadens understanding of Mozabite society and its architectural and urban heritage. The empirical study surveyed women and conducted interviews with experts. This is valuable, particularly, given the challenges of studying gender in conservative cultural settings.

The outbreak of COVID-19 not only had serious negative impacts on the world economy but also on the global mental health because of the psychological disorders associated with the spread of the pandemic, the increased degree of uncertainty and the unprecedented measures taken by different countries to face the pandemic’s spread. This paper analyses the mental health well-being of individuals in selected MENA countries (Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt) during the pandemic.

The study employs a pooled OLS model using the Economic Research Forum (ERF) COVID-19 MENA Monitor Survey panel dataset collected during 2020 and 2021.

The findings show that there is no association between the mental health of individuals in the selected countries and their age, gender, family size, marital status, receipt of social support and participation in care work. Mental health improved at higher levels of education, being employed, being a rural area resident and living in Morocco or Tunisia compared to living in Jordan while it worsened as income declined, food insecurity and anxiety about being infected with Covid-19 increased, being a resident in camps, and during waves 4 and 5. Based on these results, it is recommended that suitable financial, physical and human resources should be directed towards the provision of mental health care services in the region. Also, mental health care services should be accessible to different population groups, with a special focus towards the most vulnerable since they are more prone to mental illnesses, especially during health crises and economic shocks. This should be accompanied by increasing awareness about the provided services and reducing stigma against mental illnesses. Furthermore, introduction of policies targeted towards reducing food insecurity and income instability can play a key role in enhancing mental well-being.

Although few papers have previously investigated the impact of COVID-19 on mental health in MENA countries, most of them have focused on a country-level analysis and adopted a gender perspective. Hence, this paper aims at exploring the association between mental health well-being and socio-economic factors in selected MENA countries during the pandemic.

In this paper we explore the gendered ways in which academic staff resistance and compliance is configured in a post-1992 University in England, including the emotions implicated in the navigation of neo-liberalisation and research intensification of their academic institution and its associated disciplinarian mechanisms.

We draw on data from an interview study of a diverse sample of 32 academics of different gender, discipline and academic grade. Analysis informed by a feminist post-structuralist framework of power and discourse explored different forms of academic resistance and compliance; how the embodied academic subject was (re)negotiated within gendered discourses of neo-liberal research excellence and managerialism and the gendered emotions generated in processes of resistance and compliance.

Institutional change and expectations to engage with research performativity generated fear, anxiety and anger. Female staff appeared to actively resist the masculinized research subject performing all hours work and individualism in the context of private and institutional gendered relations and labour. Male staff though actively resisted the feminization of higher education and the neo-liberal instrumentalization of caring and therapeutic cultures and ideologically resisted the surveillance mechanisms of higher education including the REF.

Our work contributes to scholarship problematizing the assumed neutrality of resistance and compliance and highlighting women’s symbolic struggle to (dis)identify with a masculine professional norm. In terms of theorising academic resistance to neo-liberalism and identity construction, further attention should be given to the mobilization and symbolic capital of academics and emotions positioned differently due to their gender and intersecting differences.

Our study addresses a gap in the scholarship of academic resistance and compliance by advancing the understanding of gender inequalities and emotions implicated in the process of resistance and compliance against neo-liberalism.

We examined who is more likely to use flexible work arrangements (FWAs) to alleviate work-family conflict (WFC) and under what conditions the use of FWAs actually reduces WFC.

We tested the model using survey data collected at two time points from 217 employees.

Proactive employees are more likely to use flextime to alleviate WFC (b = −0.03; 95% biased-corrected CI: [−0.12, −0.01]) and this mediation relationship is not moderated by their level of low work-to-nonwork boundary permeability. In addition, only when proactive employees have a low work-to-nonwork boundary permeability does their use of flexplace alleviate WFC (b = −0.07, 95% bias-corrected CI: [−0.1613, −0.0093]).

We expand our understanding of who is more likely to utilize FWAs by identifying that employees with proactive personality are more likely to use flextime and flexplace. We also advance our understanding regarding the conditions whereby FWA use helps employees reduce WFC by identifying the moderating role of work-to-nonwork boundary permeability on the relationships between both flextime and flexplace use on WFC.

This study aims to identify factors influencing attitudes towards remote work, categorise employed Latvians into proponents and opponents of remote work and analyse these groups in the work-family-community-self integration.

This study adopts the job demands-resources theory. Empirical research is based on a survey of employed Latvians (Feb–Mar 2021, n = 1,052, n = 853,200). The focus is on employed Latvians with remote work experience, constituting 534 individuals (50.7% of the sample). The sample aligns with the demographic profile of employed Latvians, with data weighted by age and sex (across 12 age–sex combinations) from the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia. Research hypotheses include identification of “discriminatory” factors influencing the attitudes towards remote work, distinguishing between proponents and opponents; examination of distinct job demands and resources related to the work-family-community-self integration within the groups of proponents and opponents of remote work.

Survey results indicate that 11.2% respondents worked remotely before the COVID-19 pandemic, typically without formalisation. Among those with remote work experience, 40% support it, whereas 60% oppose it. Rather than social and demographics or employer support, work-related values play the most significant role in shaping attitudes. Proponents generally acquire more job resources than demands through remote work, fostering the work-family-community-self integration; conversely, opponents experience the opposite trend.

This study provides empirical insights into the attitudes of employed Latvians towards remote work in the work-family-community-self integration, using the job demands-resources model. Notably, it innovatively evaluates the institutionalisation of remote work.