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This study aims to explore the challenges and barriers encountered by Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) women entrepreneurs in an emerging country context – Sri Lanka – within a context of strict gender role stereotyping beliefs and norms.

Using qualitative research methodology, 15 in-depth, in-person, semi-structured interviews were conducted with STEM women entrepreneurs using the theoretical lenses of intersectionality and social role theories in tandem.

Findings revealed that participants were confronted with an array of structural/administrative and gender-related challenges at the intersections of gender, entrepreneurship and characteristics mapped with STEM fields. Accordingly, lack of access and reach to networks and opportunities, procedural obstacles, difficulties in staffing, difficulties in obtaining finances, lack of understanding and support from family and society, difficulties in managing work-life, and legitimacy obstacles appear to restrain the participants in starting and running their businesses. These challenges have their roots embedded in a complex web of ideologies and expectations related to gender.

This research contributes to the scant body of literature on STEM women entrepreneurship in general and specifically to the literature on challenges facing STEM women entrepreneurs from the perspective of a non-Western – emerging economy, which is built on strong cultural strictures and gender ideologies.

The figure of the female revenger has haunted the western imagination as far back as some of the earliest extant texts, most starkly in Euripides' tragedies Hecuba and Medea (c. 430–420 bc). She has tended to take on one of three forms: the scorned woman, the vengeful mother or the victim of physical violence, almost always sexual violence.

This chapter presents an interdisciplinary and transhistorical understanding of the troubling figure of the violent female revenger in her shifting incarnations. The investigation traces conceptual strands through a variety of cultural texts, focusing on specific instances that are both situated historically and simultaneously analysed for the ways in which they reflect recurring priorities and cultural anxieties through the centuries.

After considering key ideas such as revenge and justice and gender and revenge, the chapter looks more closely at the so-called rape-revenge genre, moving from the earliest examples such as I Spit on Your Grave (1978) to more recent films which are considered for the ways they intersect with the global feminist protest movement #MeToo, and other key cultural moments such as the Harvey Weinstein case and the very public trial of the USA Gymnastics national team doctor Larry Nassar: Revenge (2017), The Nightingale (2018) and Promising Young Woman (2020). The chapter draws direct lines of connection between imaginative works, cultural types and stereotypes, and lived reality in order to come to a fuller understanding of the female revenger.

Gender and disability are intimately connected as embodied experiences that young people navigate interactionally. Disabilities scholars have theorized that men and women with chronic health conditions face uniquely gendered challenges. Theories of gender and disability centered on youth continue to gain prominence as the population of children and young adults with chronic health conditions grows. This study draws on data from 22 in-depth interviews with young adults diagnosed with chronic health conditions in childhood in the United States. Women, men, and gender nonbinary individuals report that doing disability in interactions in childhood meant doing gender in expected feminine ways. Specifically, interviewees described increased empathy, a deep understanding of their own emotions, and the ability to use adversity to connect with and benefit others as expectations. Interviewees employed or resisted doing gender in ways that reflected individuals' gender locations. Women and nonbinary individuals saw feminine performance as a sign of weakness, often resisting demonstrating it in interactions. On the other hand, feminine performance reportedly impacted men in the sample in positive ways. This study takes a life course approach to illuminate how the ableist expectations expressed to disabled children are gendered and impact how disabled young adults negotiate an ableist world.

Internationally publicized cases of police violence against unarmed black men have led to calls for accountability in policing. Increased footage of police–public interactions, specifically through the form of police body-worn cameras (BWCs), is encouraged and considered an innovation that can improve the policing profession. However, BWC adoption is likely more feasible in big city departments than in small and rural departments, who respond to many of the same issues as their larger counterparts. The purpose of this study is to explore perceptions of BWC among leaders of small and rural police departments.

Using a mixed methods approach, the authors surveyed 349 chiefs of small and rural Pennsylvania police departments and conducted qualitative follow-up interviews with 53 chiefs.

The results indicate that both adopters and non-adopters esteem BWC in a positive light, particularly toward the ability to improve professionalism and police–community relations. Other findings and implications of these results will be discussed.

This study focuses on small and rural police departments, which make up the majority of police departments but are often understudied.

Supporting community college transfer students represents a critical strategy for broadening participation in STEM. In addition to being a racially diverse group, students who pursue STEM degrees by way of community college report frequent interests in graduate study and academic careers. Thus, supporting and expanding transfer students’ PhD interests can help to diversify the STEM professoriate. This study aims to identify the experiences that predict PhD interests among students who transferred into the computer science major from a community college.

Relying on longitudinal survey data from over 150 community college transfer students throughout their first year at their receiving four-year university, we used regression analysis to identify the post-transfer college experiences that predict early interest in PhDs.

We found that receiving information about PhDs from a professor strongly predicted PhD interest among transfer students. Relationships with other variables indicate that the provision of information about graduate school was more likely to occur for students who participated in undergraduate research experiences than for those participating in internships. Descriptive data document inequities in who has access to these types of experiences.

This paper provides new insight into how STEM departments can develop targeted efforts to ensure that information about PhD training is equitably available to all transfer students. Working to ensure that faculty equitably communicate with students about PhD opportunities may go a long way in countering potential deterrents among transfer students who may be interested in such pathways.

Research on human trafficking largely focuses on large, urban areas, yet it is a problem in small, rural areas. Police in these areas must have the training to identify human trafficking and resources to combat the issue – both of which may be lacking in small, rural areas. The purpose of this project is to explore police chiefs' perspectives on human trafficking in small, rural areas.

A mixed-methods approach was used to assess Pennsylvania police chiefs' understanding of human trafficking and their perspective of the extent of the problem in their area. First, 349 police chiefs completed an online survey during the summer of 2020. Follow-up in-depth interviews were conducted with 52 police chiefs.

Most chiefs believed human trafficking is a problem in Pennsylvania (81%) or in their local area (12%). Logistic regression analysis indicated chief experience, department budget and the number of employees affect small and rural police chief perceptions of human trafficking. Qualitative analyses identified three themes of police chief perceptions of human trafficking: conflation with prostitution, definitional debates and competing beliefs about prevalence. Training on identifying human trafficking would benefit small and rural police departments. Chiefs recommended outside assistance investigating human trafficking cases and other state-level resources would be helpful.

Scant research exists on small and rural police departments in the United States, especially in regards to human trafficking. This study contributes to the literature by addressing this gap with a mixed-methods approach.