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The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the multinational oil companies’ (MOCs) corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Nigeria. Its special focus is to investigate the impact of the global memorandum of understanding (GMoU) on women’s involvement in rural labour market in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

This paper adopts a survey research technique, aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of the population, as it is essentially cross-sectional, describing and interpreting the current situation. A total of 768 respondents were sampled across the rural areas of the Niger Delta region.

The results from the use of a combined propensity score matching and logit model indicate that CSR of the MOCs using GMoU model has recorded little but significant success in improving women’s participation in the labour market by freeing women’s time through labour-saving technologies and the provision of public services, raising women’s capital through education, eliminating discriminatory employment practices and capitalizing on public works programmes.

This suggest that the underlining causes of gender inequality in rural labour markets are institutional, including both social norms and the structure of labour market organizations, and can be holistically tackled through CSR programmes, government policies and building the strength of women in labour organizations.

This implies that reducing rural poverty requires not just the barriers to women’s participation in decent employment but also aiming for a policy that helps to change people’s perceptions of what is possible, beneficial and fair; fosters cooperative action; and strengthens women’s bargaining power in the work place, the home and the market place.

This research contributes to the gender debate in agriculture from a CSR perspective in developing countries and rationale for demands for social project by host communities. It concludes that business has an obligation to help in solving problems of public concern.

The PRCA December 2020 census tells us that, in the United Kingdom, the public relations (PR) industry continues to be predominantly female, with 68% of respondents ticking that box. It also highlights a ‘gender pay gap’ of 21%, an increase of 7% from March 2020 and states that ‘this can be explained by the fact that the respondents … are largely in senior roles which tend to be more male dominated’ (PRCA, 2020), thus demonstrating a leadership gap as well as a pay one. Both of the leading PR professional membership bodies in the United Kingdom – the PRCA and CIPR – acknowledge the gender pay and leadership gaps, made starker in an industry dominated by women, and have committed to tackle the disparity.

In this chapter, I build on Liz Yeomans' (2020) work, in which she suggests ‘new avenues for researching neoliberalism and postfeminism in PR’ (p. 44) to examine the ‘apparently progressive moves’ (Yeomans', 2020) by women's networking organisations. I analyse website texts from two women-only PR networking organisations – Women in PR and Global Women in PR – to explore the ways in which they construct their function, purpose and role, and to examine their position vis-à-vis the contemporary postfeminist media culture (Gill, 2007). The research takes a feminist, discourse analytic approach and sheds light on the reality of women in PR as constructed by organisations whose stated goal is to: ‘improve equality and diversity across the industry by increasing the number and diversity of women in leadership roles’ (Women in PR, 2022).

All entrepreneurs interact simultaneously with multiple entrepreneurial contexts throughout their entrepreneurial journey. This conceptual paper has two central aims: (1) it synthesises the current literature on gender and entrepreneurship, and (2) it increases our understanding of how gender norms, contextual embeddedness and (in)equality mechanisms interact within contexts. Illustrative contexts that are discussed include entrepreneurship education, business networks and finance.

This conceptual paper draws upon extant literature to develop its proposed conceptual framework. It provides suggestions for systemic policy interventions as well as pointing to promising paths for future research.

A literature-generated conceptual framework is developed to explain and address the systemic barriers faced by opportunity-driven women as they engage in entrepreneurial contexts. This conceptual framework visualises the interplay between gender norms, contextual embeddedness and inequality mechanisms to explain systemic disparities. An extra dimension is integrated in the framework to account for the power of agency within women and with others, whereby agency, either individually or collectively, may disrupt and subvert the current interplay with inequality mechanisms.

This work advances understanding of the underrepresentation of women entrepreneurs. The paper offers a conceptual framework that provides policymakers with a useful tool to understand how to intervene and increase contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. Additionally, this paper suggests moving beyond “fixing” women entrepreneurs and points towards disrupting systemic disparities to accomplish this contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. By doing so, this research adds to academic knowledge on the construction and reconstruction of gender in the field of entrepreneurship.

Based on the transformative learning theory, this paper analyses a French women-only training programme (WOTP) that aims to develop women’s soft skills in their professional contexts. This paper aims to focus on the process of personal transformation, the collective dimensions and the unexpected effects of the transformation.

This paper used a mixed qualitative design that mainly combines a qualitative two-step study of 47 women to assess their personal changes in terms of self-confidence, self-efficacy and assertiveness. This paper used 13 semi-structured interviews to explore the perceived changes in-depth.

The analysis shows that beyond “fixing their lack of skills” – including self-limiting behaviours, low feelings of self-efficacy and difficulty claiming one’s place – a WOTP can trigger a transformational learning experience at the individual level and can modify the surveyed women’s attitudes and behaviours at work. The results also highlight the collective dimension of transformation and, to some extent, an avenue for a societal transformation.

One can state that these WOTPs may positively contribute to human resources development in organisations, and that they may be considered a relevant practice in the move to promote women and gender diversity in organisations.

The findings reveal that, at their individual levels, these women may become agents of change by influencing and acting in their professional lives. The results stress that training women may contribute to organisational changes in terms of gender diversity. These findings contribute to the enrichment of the transformative learning theory by developing the collective and societal dimensions.

In order to address the gender divide in technology entrepreneurship, we explore how different national contexts impact policies and policy implementation. We investigate how transnational concerns (macro level) about women’s low participation in (technology) entrepreneurship are translated and implemented amongst actors at the meso level (technology incubators) and understood at the micro level (women tech entrepreneurs).

We adopt gender institutionalism as a theoretical lens to understand what happens in the implementation of gender equality goals in technology entrepreneurship policy. We apply Gains and Lowndes’ (2014) conceptual framework to investigate the gendered character and effects of institutional formation. Four countries represent different levels of gender equality: high (Norway and Sweden), medium (Ireland) and low (Israel). An initial policy document analysis provides the macro level understanding (Heilbrunn et al., 2020). At the meso level, managers of technology business incubators (n = 3–5) in each country were interviewed. At the micro level, 10 female technology entrepreneurs in each country were interviewed. We use an inductive research approach, combined with thematic analysis.

Policies differ across the four countries, ranging from women-centred approaches to gender mainstreaming. Macro level policies are interpreted and implemented in different ways amongst actors at the meso level, who tend to act in line with given national policies. Actors at the micro level often understand gender equality in ways that reflect their national policies. However, women in all four countries share similar struggles with work-life balance and gendered expectations in relation to family responsibilities.

The contribution of our paper is to (1) entrepreneurship theory by applying gendered institutionalism theory to (tech) entrepreneurship, and (2) our findings clearly show that the gendered context matters for policy implementation.

This paper highlights how career capital is accrued through three ways of knowing in a women’s leadership programme (WLP) in an Australian State Police Department. A shift in focus to building capability rather than addressing gaps in participants' abilities was enhanced through the unique use of sponsors and positive psychology interventions.

A longitudinal study, which comprised 31 semi-structured in-depth interviews and focus groups, and a survey with participants eight months after the interviews, assessed the impact of enhanced skills, connections and qualifications on extant role performance.

The WLP enhanced three key components of career capital.

The authors' study extends extant knowledge in seven key ways related to WLPs: (1) reaffirms the benefits for police, (2) developing or enhancing career capital, (3) accruing women’s career capital in policing, (4) pedagogical benefits for WLPs, (5) articulating outcomes of developing career capital, (6) the uniqueness of allocating sponsors and (7) extending empirical studies demonstrating synergies within the intelligent career framework.

Skilled migrant (SM) women play a key role in developed countries especially in healthcare and education in easing staffing shortages and migrate expecting to gain qualification-matched employment (QME). The aim of this review is to assess whether SM women gain the anticipated QME, equitably compared to their skilled counterparts and to examine why and how they do so.

I conducted a systematic literature review to derive empirical studies to assess if, why and how SM women achieve QME (1) using SM women-only samples and comparative samples including SM women, and (2) examining whether they gain QME directly on or soon after migration or indirectly over time through undertaking alternative, contingent paths.

Only a minority of SM women achieve the anticipated QME directly soon after migration and less often than their skilled counterparts. Explaining the mechanism for achieving QME, other women, especially due to having young families, indirectly undertake alternative, lower-level contingent paths enabling them to ascend later to QME.

The SM literature gains new knowledge from revealing how SM women can gain positions post-migration comparable to their pre-migration qualifications through undertaking the alternative, contingent paths of steppingstone jobs and academic study, especially as part of agreed familial strategies. This review results in a theoretical mechanism (mediation by a developmental contingency path) to provide an alternative mechanism by which SM women achieve QME.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current state of the literature on the variables associated with self-harm and aggression in women who committed a criminal offence.

Studies were identified through online databases, namely, PsycINFO, PubMed, ERIC and EBSCOhost, as well as manual searches of reference lists of the selected studies. The target population included women who committed a criminal offence and have engaged in self-harm and aggressive behaviors during their incarceration, either in correctional institutions or in forensic psychiatric settings.

Of the 1,178 studies identified, nine met inclusion criteria. The studies were conducted in six different countries and included data from 6360 female participants. Few studies examine self-harm and aggression in women who committed a criminal offence which speaks to the still sparse literature on this topic. This review of the association between self-harm and aggression in women offenders highlights the finding that a small group of women is often involved in both self-harm and aggression. The authors have identified possible psychological factors associated with women engaging in both self-harm and aggression. The findings also reveal a possible connection between types of aggressive behaviors and specific time periods during sentences or stays in forensic psychiatry.

The findings of this scoping review have clinical implications which may be considered by both researchers and the case management teams of women involved in both self-harm and aggression.

Despite the limited number of studies examining self-harm and aggression in women, this scoping review highlights gaps in the literature as well as notable psychological correlates of women who engage in self-harm and aggression.

The Women in Leadership Development (WLD) Initiative is a year-long, multifaceted co-curricular leadership development opportunity created to support the unique developmental needs of emerging women leaders. WLD was intentionally designed around the context of second-generation gender bias with a firm grounding of research and theory on gender and leadership.

Organized around three leadership pathways – leadership training, leadership coaching, and leadership support networks – WLD brings together the best practices of leadership development in combination with feminist pedagogy and critical perspectives to foster meaningful and impactful development of women leaders.

This paper describes the design of the initiative and how each leadership pathway supports the leadership development journey for emerging women leaders. It provides a model that is impactful as well as foundational, for undergraduate women’s leadership development.

Women leaders, in particular, can benefit from leadership development that takes gender into account (DeFrank-Cole & Tan, 2022a; Ely et al., 2011).

While the causes and effects of begging are well known, solutions on how to eradicate begging are still elusive in many parts of the developing world. The purpose of this study is to examine the different ways through which community leaders at the local level can contribute to the eradication of begging in one of Ghana’s most densely populated suburbs in the city of Accra.

This study was undertaken using the qualitative approach, and primary data was collected through interviews, participants observation and focus group discussions with beggars, community leaders and officials of non-governmental organisations at Nima, a suburb of Accra.

Begging in the suburb of Nima is increasingly becoming a business venture. It is no more an activity that is the preserve of only the weak, the poor, the elderly, the physically challenged, the needy and the marginalised in society. This paper argues that the eradication of begging requires multiple approaches and that community-based leaders must play a central role. This paper identified the provision of alternative sources of livelihood, the naming, shaming and condemnation of unjustified begging in the community, strict boarder control, returning foreign beggars to their home countries, the formulation and enforcement of community anti-begging by-laws and regular sensitisation programs on begging as crucial in reducing or eliminating begging.

While focusing on one Muslim-dominated suburb in Accra ensures a detailed discussion of strategies of eliminating begging from a cultural and religious perspective, the findings of this study may not be applicable to non-Islamic settings and communities where cultural or religious leadership structures do not exist.

This study has demonstrated that the eradication of begging in society cannot have one-size-fit all solution. This paper shows that in societies where cultural and religious leadership structures exist, they must play important roles in the design and implementation of strategies that seek to reduce or eliminate religious begging in society. This implies that formal government agencies and their associated laws alone will not be enough to eradicate or reduce begging under such contexts.

Measures to eradicate begging have often ignored the role of community leaders. This paper contributes to our understanding on this by specifically examining the phenomenon of begging at the micro level and exploring the different ways community leaders can contribute to the eradication of begging in society.