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Women’s employment has been a contentious issue in the Arab world. However, in today’s changing work conditions, workplaces, and the growth in education, women have increasingly occupied higher-level roles, and their presence in diverse industries has expanded. The study takes a holistic approach to female labor force participation (FLFP) in Oman, encompassing various theories and factors influencing women’s engagement in private sector jobs.

The research employed an exploratory design followed by a qualitative analysis based on a constructivist grounded theory approach. The study involved 170 semi-structured face-to-face interviews with women workers in Oman’s private sector. It explored work–family conflict (WFC), work–life balance (WLB), organizational and family support, and societal bias impacting female labor force participation.

The low FLFP in Oman’s private sector is a complex issue shaped by various interconnected challenges. Our qualitative analysis synthesizes a conceptual framework that highlights WFC and WLB as pivotal factors behind low FLFP, as women in the private sector face long work hours, low salaries, and high responsibilities. Our study confirms that these women receive substantial familial support in dealing with WFC but lack organizational support and family-friendly policies (FFPs).

Addressing the low participation of women in Oman’s private sector labor force necessitates comprehensive strategies encompassing legislative measures, cultural shifts, and organizational reforms. Implementing these strategies creates an environment where women feel empowered to participate and actively thrive in the private sector workforce.

This study indicates the presence of some serious social issues, such as society’s bias, lack of support for working women, and the gender gap in the private sector workforce, which has broad implications and significance for Oman. The study indicates the positive role of support women receive from their families, organizations, and Oman labor law and what could improve their participation further.

This study addresses the limited research on challenges encountered by women in Oman’s private-sector workforce. Our research addresses this gap by answering key questions, collecting and interpreting data, and developing a comprehensive conceptual framework. This framework aims to elucidate the factors contributing to women’s reluctance to pursue private-sector employment, considering the diverse issues they confront.

The paucity of artisans in some construction trades and the transitioning of the experience of the few for sustainability calls for concern. Mentorship programmes offer a promising mechanism to support construction artisans through those transitions. Mentorship may enhance artisan decent work and economic growth, like increased income for artisans. This is part of Sustainable Development Goal 8 (Goal 8). Hence, this study aims to investigate issues hindering construction artisan skills growth and suggest measures to improve construction artisan skills through mentorship mechanisms to achieve Goal 8.

The study adopted a qualitative approach and collected data via oral interviews with knowledgeable participants. The participants were consultant experts in mentorship and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) matters, construction organisation management staffers and construction artisans in the Nigerian construction industry. The study covered Lagos and Abuja and achieved saturation at the 30th interviewee. Also, the research utilised a thematic method to analyse the collated data.

Enhanced knowledge sharing accelerates junior artisans’ learning skills quickly, improving artisans’ performance, ensuring sustainability of the skills learned (knowledge retention), encouraging collaboration, building the next generation of leaders and transitioning of experience to mentees emerged as mentorship’s role in developing construction artisans’ skills. Findings show that mentorship mechanisms to develop construction artisan skills face encumbrances. The perceived 32 encumbrances were re-clustered into mentee, mentor and government-related encumbrances. Also, achieving Goal 8 regarding construction artisans may be threatened if these issues are not checked. Thus, the study recommended measures improving construction artisan skills through mentorship mechanisms to achieve Goal 8.

Identifying the major encumbrances facing construction artisan skills improvement through mentorship would be useful to advocate measures to improve construction artisan’s skills to achieve Goal 8.

Sport organizations hold substantial ideological power to showcase and reinforce dominant cultural ideas about gender. The organization and portrayal of sporting events and spaces continue to promote and reinforce a hierarchical gender binary where heroic forms of masculinity are both desired and privileged. Such publicly visible gender hierarchies contribute to the doing of gender beyond sport itself, extending to influence gender power relations within sport and non-sport organizations. Yet, there has been a relative absence of scholarship on sport organizations within the organizational sociology field. In this paper, we review findings of studies that look at how formal and informal organizational dimensions influence the doing and undoing of gender in sport organizations. Subsequently, we call for scholars to pay more attention to sport itself as a source of gendered organizational practices within both sport and non-sport organizations. We end with suggestions for research that empirically explores this linkage by focusing on innovative theoretical perspectives that could provide new insights on gender inclusion in organizations.

This paper aims to appraise the effectiveness of gender quotas in breaking the glass ceiling for women on boards (WoBs) in companies that are legally obliged to comply with quotas (listed companies and state-owned companies, LP) and in those that are not (unlisted companies and nonstate-owned companies, NLNP). Furthermore, it investigates the glass cliff phenomenon, according to which women are more likely to be appointed to apical positions in underperforming companies.

A balanced panel data of the top 116 Italian companies by total assets, which are present in both 2010 and 2017, is used for estimating ANOVA tests across sectors and fixed-effects panel regression models.

WoBs significantly increased in both the LP and the NLNP companies, and this increase was greater in the financial sector. Furthermore, the relationship between the percentage of WoBs and firm performance is not linear but depends on the financial corporate health. Specifically, the situation in which a woman ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high (glass cliff phenomenon) is only present in companies with the lowest performance in the sample, in other words, when negative values of Roe and negative or zero values of Roa occur together.

These findings have relevant policy implications that encourage the adoption of gender quotas even in specific top positions, such as CEO or president, as this could lead to a “double spillover effect” both vertically, that is, in other job positions, and horizontally, toward other companies not targeted by quotas. Practical interventions to support women in glass cliff positions, on the other hand, relate to the extent of supervisor mentoring and support to prevent women from leaving director roles and strengthen their chances for career advancement.

The authors explore the ability of gender quotas to break through the glass ceiling in companies that are not legally obliged to do so, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, the glass cliff phenomenon in the Italian context.

The purpose of this study is to critically analyze the key factors contributing to gender disparities in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields and propose creative solutions to mitigate these differences. Despite the significance of this issue, it has not received sufficient attention owing to the absence of clarity regarding the factors that exacerbate the gender gap.

This study used a qualitative methodology that combined the viewpoints of social psychology and educational research to pinpoint and evaluate essential elements. Using a grounded theory approach, semistructured interviews were analyzed, and the obtained data were coded and categorized using ATLAS.ti software.

This qualitative research identified three key areas: internal and external factors influencing the gender gap, as well as strategic actions within higher education to address these disparities. The innovative contribution of this study lies in its development of a comprehensive theoretical framework that enables the diagnosis, quantification and understanding of these factors and proposes practical measures to mitigate these gender disparities. By promoting greater gender diversity, the proposed model can contribute to more inclusive and sustainable development, which is consistent with the 2030 agenda.

This study highlights the need for a multidimensional approach to address the gender gap in higher education, fills a crucial knowledge gap and provides a theoretical model to guide effective university policies.

This chapter provides an exhaustive analysis on the development of cricket in China in order to advance existing theories of cricket's development and consider future implications for the international game. Adapted from two journal articles of He and Malcolm (2021) and He et al. (2023), it structures the development of cricket in China according to two key historical era: cricket as an ‘expatriate-only’ game and cricket as an ‘Asian Games sport’. The first era, cricket as an ‘expatriate-only’ game, is constructed according to three key phases: early development; post-war and the ‘opening-up’ era. The second era, cricket as an ‘Asian Games sport’, is constructed according to five periods: budding period (2003–2005), peak period (2006–2010), stable period (2011–2014), trough period (2015–2018) and revival period (2019–present). This paper offers a broadened examination of cricket's development in China, contending that cricket in the country (specifically the mainland) manifests itself in two distinct forms, that is, first, it survives as a grassroots sport, sustained by a resilient expatriate diaspora community. Second, it exists as a sport primarily directed by the state and bolstered by the Asian Games and deeply integrated into the Chinese educational system. It concludes that the degree to which the co-existed motives of multiple stakeholders aligned and misaligned, and the interdependence with the unstable ‘Asian Games sport status’ will serve as the cornerstone for cricket's future in China and contribute significantly to the international sport's global development.

The body has been one of the central tools in analysing connections between sport and postcolonialism in India, given how sport was an essential part of the colonial ‘civilising’ mission, which involved disciplining and controlling Indian bodies. Any discursive understanding of sport and postcolonialism in India must consider how it relates to existing concepts of the body and shapes the experiences of the people involved in it – acknowledging not just the power of colonialism in moulding sporting experiences but also the force of internal hierarchies that exist in Indian society. This chapter explores the experiences of students who studied in higher educational institutions in Kerala under the ‘sports quota’, a system that reserves seats in colleges/universities for high-performing sportspersons in India. Through their interviews, the sustained exclusion of the sporting body in contemporary Indian pedagogy is illustrated here. Specifically, the continuing prevalence of the colonial emphasis on the sporting body, as one whose strength and instrumentality are paramount, as well as its corollary postcolonial position, which treats this sporting body as inferior to the ‘refined mind’ of studious pupils, can be observed. Approaching the sports quota with a decolonising lens would require re-examining the disembodied nature of pedagogy in India’s higher educational institutions, acknowledging sporting students’ lived experiences, and a seamless integration – as opposed to separation/exclusion – of the sportsperson into higher education.

This is an account of student experiences with the 2020/2021 Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Manufacturing and Design (WiSTEM²D) intervention programme at the University of Limerick (UL).

The WiSTEM²D programme supports female undergraduate students undertaking science, technology, engineering, mathematics, manufacturing and design (STEM²D) courses, helping them develop and grow in their degrees, research and beyond.

During the programme, data were gathered from students in the form of qualitative information, which was used to analyse perceptions of the programme. This analysis revealed that students found the WiSTEM²D programme beneficial to them and that it improved their confidence levels, career knowledge and overall networking abilities.

WiSTEM²D is one of several initiatives globally that are attempting to empower and encourage women to be active in STEM.

This study aims to investigate the effects of board cultural diversity (BCD) and board gender diversity (BGD) of the board of directors on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in the European banking sector using resource-based view (RBV) theory. In addition, this study analyses the linkages between BCD and BGD and knowledge sharing on the board of directors to improve ESG performance.

This study selected a sample of European-listed banks covering the period 2021. ESG and diversity variables were collected from Refinitiv Eikon and analysed using the ordinary least squares model. This study was conducted in the European context regulated by Directive 95/2014/EU, which requires sustainability disclosure. The original population was represented by 250 banks; after missing data were excluded, the final sample comprised 96 European-listed banks.

The findings highlight the positive linkages between BGD, BCD and ESG scores in the European banking sector. In addition, the findings highlight that diversity contributes to knowledge sharing by improving ESG performance in a regulated sector. Nonetheless, the combined effect of BGD and BCD negatively impacts ESG performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to measure and analyse a regulated sector, such as banking, and the relationship between cultural and gender diversity for sharing knowledge under the RBV theory lens in the ESG framework.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between Kosovo remittances, migration and labor force participation and seeks to uncover how migration and remittances, often considered separately, interact to shape labor market outcomes across gender, age and education groups.

To analyze the relationship between remittances, migration and labor force participation, this study leverages multivariate probit (mvprobit) to rectify the endogeneity issue intrinsic from remittances and migration. Utilizing this robust methodological approach allows us to circumvent the limitations traditionally associated with biprobit analysis. The research is grounded in empirical evidence from the Millennium Century Corporation survey in Kosovo.

The findings indicate that remittances and migration are pivotal determinants in shaping the contours of labor force participation, particularly influencing disparities across gender, age and educational attainment. Further, this study unearthed intriguing evidence suggesting the disincentivizing effect of remittances on labor force participation, alongside the potentially disruptive influence of prospective migration plans.

The novelty of this work lies not only in the context-specific insights it provides into the socio-economic fabric of Kosovo—an area that has hitherto received limited scholarly attention—but also in its methodological innovation. The simultaneous application of mvprobit technique provides a nuanced approach to tackle the inherent endogeneity issue, thereby pushing the methodological frontiers of the field.