Search Results (18)

This study examines how rural Indonesian women entrepreneurs navigate the gendered structures and institutional barriers that shape their entrepreneurial experiences. Grounded in the Gender and Development (GAD) framework, the research employs a qualitative, interpretive design and draws on 22 semi-structured interviews with women entrepreneurs from diverse regions and sectors. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns of constraint, agency, and transformation within women’s narratives. Findings reveal that patriarchal norms and time poverty continue to restrict women’s visibility and resource access. Nevertheless, they exercise negotiated agency through adaptive strategies such as front-stage/back-stage role division, emotional resilience, and collective peer support. Over time, these adaptive behaviors evolve into transformative practices, such as digital market-making, gender-conscious leadership, and intergenerational empowerment, that challenge structural inequalities from within. The study refines GAD theory by conceptualizing empowerment as cyclical and context-embedded, rather than linear or absolute. Policy implications emphasize reforms linking inclusion to transformation through childcare-linked training, collateral access, digital literacy, and institutional support for women’s networks. Overall, entrepreneurship emerges as both a livelihood strategy and a transformative social practice redefining gender relations in Indonesia. Full article

The division of labor in mixed-gender couples has been a popular research topic for several decades, including discussions about household labor, childcare, and paid employment. However, few studies have examined these processes as they apply to highly religious couples, whose perspectives on labor division show some evidence of diverging from those who are less devout. To better understand how successful mixed-gender, highly religious couples from a broad range of faith traditions conceptualize the division of paid and unpaid labor, we employed a strengths-based, qualitative approach, examining data from 103 interviews with highly religious, highly satisfied couples (N = 206 participants). Viewed within an interdependence theory framework, findings across numerous religions and ethnicities revealed evidence of communal relationships, with themes emphasizing partnership, shared responsibility, and varied labor arrangements that required commitment, trust, and sacrifice. While spouses evidenced high levels of agreement with each other, a strong emphasis on a husband’s responsibility to provide financially contrasted with a more nuanced view of women’s roles, with some participants stressing women’s roles at home and some highlighting their right to choose employment and a more flexible household labor division. Difficulties mentioned revolved around traditional labor arrangements and work–life balance for husbands. Full article

This study examines cross-national differences in parental involvement, work hours, and gender ideologies among parents in the UK and Portugal. Findings revealed that UK parents, particularly mothers, reported higher childcare involvement, while Portuguese parents worked more paid hours, reflecting fewer structural childcare constraints. Despite mothers in both countries endorsing more egalitarian gender ideologies than fathers, Portuguese parents overall held more egalitarian views and lower essentialist beliefs. Surprisingly, British fathers reported greater involvement in physical childcare than their Portuguese counterparts. Gender ideologies negatively predicted partner childcare hours, indicating compensatory dynamics, with significant mediation by work hours only in the UK. This suggests that egalitarian gender beliefs alone might be insufficient for achieving equality in family roles without corresponding sociopolitical frameworks to enable equitable practices. These results highlight the influence of national context and gender beliefs on family labour divisions and underscore the need for policies that support more equitable sharing of paid and unpaid responsibilities across both countries. Full article

Intensive parenting is a parenting style in which parents, especially mothers, devote significant portions of their time, money, and energy to their children. An intensive parenting attitude questionnaire has been developed that assesses five dimensions of intensive parenting attitude: (1) Essentialism, (2) Fulfillment, (3) Challenging, (4) Stimulation, and (5) Child-centered. Psychologists suggest this attitude can negatively impact maternal mental health or well-being, with the impact varying according to cultural and societal values or socioeconomic and occupational status. There is a need to investigate the effect of intensive parenting attitude on mothers with a focus on a specific culture and maternal background, especially in societies with strongly gendered division of labor. The questionnaire survey examined whether housewives with at least one infant or preschool-aged child (n = 467) and part-time working mothers (n = 148) were affected by intensive parenting attitude in Japan, where there is strongly gendered division of labor and mothers usually take on the burden of housework and childcare responsibilities. In this study, the effects of maternal socioeconomic status and perceived social support were controlled for in order to elucidate the link between intensive parenting attitudes and maternal well-being and self-efficacy. Results showed that, when controlling for socioeconomic status and perceived social support, each dimension of intensive parenting attitude was significantly associated with perceived maternal stress, general life satisfaction, and self-efficacy. Most surprisingly, Essentialism was negatively associated with perceived stress and positively associated with self-efficacy. These findings suggest that the effects of intensive parenting attitude on mothers depend on current child-rearing circumstances and societal or country values. Future research on intensive parenting attitude should consider social variables of mothers. Full article

An increasing number of studies have sought to explore the gender gap in the distribution of family responsibilities. While men and women have become more similar in their egalitarian views and involvement toward paid work and family responsibilities, mothers continue to bear the brunt of housework and caregiving responsibilities. The present study explored the allocation of family work among Portuguese couples and the social–psychological characteristics associated with it. A sample of 153 parents with young children completed questionnaires. The results revealed that parents’ gender ideologies and biological essentialism were related and predicted their involvement in childcare and housework. Overall, the findings shed light on the mechanisms that shape the division of childcare and housework and suggest pathways for achieving greater gender equality within the home. Full article

Fathers’ parental leave use has often been explained by differing fatherhood ideals among low vs. highly educated fathers. However, recent research reveals that 75% of the educational-level impact stems from workplace differences. Therefore, a deeper understanding of how workplace dynamics interact with both fathers’ ideals and actual leave practices is needed. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Norwegian fathers with and without higher education, we explore how different workplace dynamics, especially the degree of individual competition, interact with fatherhood ideals and fathers’ actual leave practices. We find strong adherence to the idea of ‘involved fatherhood’ and fathers’ quota across educational levels and workplace dynamics but large variation in practices. Our analyses show how childcare responsibility and absence from work responsibility do not necessarily correspond and how formal leave uptake and actual leave practices may differ. Our findings indicate that non-transferable fathers’ leave may dissolve former attitude-based divisions, as fathers across educational levels in collectively organized jobs support and practice child-centered leave. Still, fathers in competitive jobs may continue to practice ‘work-centered fatherhood’ despite their strong gender-egalitarian beliefs and formal leave uptake. Hence, workplace dynamics—especially the degree of individualized competition and the fear of becoming replaceable—may be more relevant than fatherhood ideals to understand and enhance fathers’ actual leave use and involved fatherhood practices. Full article

In Japan, there is almost no national policy that details the attributes and abilities desirable for school management staff. However, in March 2023, Toda City in Saitama prefecture, a city famous for its aggressive education reforms, published the Toda City School Management Rubric (SMR) as perspectives to be referred to in the daily practice of school management through a time-consuming hearing from principals and vice principals. By categorizing each dimension of the rubric itself as well as the documents relating to the creation process with the four school leadership styles, while making a comparison to school leadership standards in the U.S. and U.K., this paper aims to illuminate how the magic words of “school leadership” were turned into concrete perspectives for school leaders to reflect on. As a result, there are similarities and differences among leadership standards in three countries. Moreover, a transformational leadership style seems to be the most frequently mentioned among the four school leadership styles, and many of the principals and vice principals referred to instructional leadership in a sense that they need to take a lead in transforming traditional teacher-led instruction into student-centered learning. Furthermore, a distributed leadership style is considered to be important by many school leaders, especially because they continue to seek an appropriate balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches, and some principals and vice principals take the issue of work style reform seriously, which assumes an aspect of transactional leadership. As an arguably unprecedented attempt to comprehensively analyze the detailed policy documents on school leadership in Japan, this article will provide cross-cultural implications for school leadership policy and practice. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic affected economic, social, health, and political aspects of most global, national, and local populations, including urban and rural communities. Government measures like lockdowns resulted in the closure of schools and businesses, while social distancing preventing group gatherings impacted public and private spaces. Based on key informants’ interviews with 36 participants drawn equally from three senatorial districts of Edo and Delta states of Nigeria, we analyzed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the type of work men and women do and division of household activities, such as cooking, child, and family care. The findings show that traditional gender role ideology (GRI) defines and shapes rural men’s and women’s work, with women more engaged in farming, rearing livestock, and trading while men are engaged in farming, rearing livestock, and carrying out skilled jobs like carpentry, plumbing, and blacksmithing. The lockdown of schools and workplaces resulted in women disproportionately bearing the burden of cooking and caring for children, the elderly, and the sick. A few rural men shared childcare, while women spent more time on housework and childcare activities than in the pre-pandemic period when children were in school for 6–7 h daily. During the pandemic, rural men and women spent more time with the children, such that rural women stayed at home or took children to the farms and marketplaces where possible. Older siblings and the elderly also provided support for women. In conclusion, work and family activities during COVID were, to an extent, difficult to manage as parents had to cope with increasing food insecurity, economic and transportation costs, and social deprivation fostered by social norms, values, and practices that perpetuate gender inequality and marginalization of women. Full article

Contemporary research finds that gender continues to provide an organizing framework for couples’ allocation of household labor. To explain this outcome, scholars focus on how structural arrangements and cultural beliefs contribute to the persistence of gender inequality in domestic labor. Yet scholarship has yet to fully clarify what combination of cultural and structural factors create persistent gender inequality in household labor. We use the COVID-19 pandemic as a naturally occurring event in which arrangements for childcare and work were upended, making it possible for many to rethink their household arrangements. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 81 respondents in heterosexual dual-earner couples, we examine how change in structural arrangements allowed some couples to develop a more egalitarian division of domestic labor. We also examine why an unequal division of labor persisted for most couples even amid the dramatic changes in their work and childcare arrangements and, for some, a strong desire to do so. We theorize that, taken alone, neither cultural attitudes nor shifts in the organization of work are sufficient to remove the stickiness of gender inequality in household work. Instead, structural change offers the possibility to change behavior, but only if cultural beliefs exist that make such change desirable. Full article

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work became the new reality for many fathers. Though time availability theory suggests that this newfound flexibility should lead to more domestic labor on the part of fathers, many were skeptical that fathers would step up to shoulder the load at home. Indeed, the findings are decidedly mixed on the association of fathers’ remote work with their performance of housework and childcare. Nonetheless, research has yet to consider how contextual factors, such as fathers’ gender ideologies and mothers’ employment, may condition these associations. Using data from Wave 1 of the Study on U.S. Parents’ Divisions of Labor During COVID-19 (SPDLC), we examine how gender ideology moderates the association between fathers’ remote work and their performance and share of childcare during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in both sole-earner and dual-earner families. The results show, for sole-earning fathers and dual-earner fathers with egalitarian gender attitudes, that the frequency of remote work was positively associated with fathers performing more, and a greater share of, childcare during the pandemic. Yet, only dual-earner fathers with egalitarian gender attitudes performed an equal share of childcare in their families. These findings suggest that the pandemic provided structural opportunities for fathers, particularly egalitarian-minded fathers, to be the equally engaged parents they desired. Full article

The COVID-19 lockdown forced people to stay at home and address their family duties more equally. However, since nurses themselves were involved in the closed-loop management in hospitals and unable to return home, there was also an increased likelihood of non-traditional work-family strategies emerging. To ascertain the extant and implications of this phenomenon, this cross-sectional study explores work–family management strategies among nurses during the COVID-19 lockdown and their association with nurses’ individual health, family relationships, and job performance. Survey data were collected from 287 nurses who were involved in the closed-loop management in Shanghai hospitals from March to June 2022. Latent Class Analysis of seven categorical variables of nurses’ work–family status (e.g., the division of childcare labor) produced a best-fit solution of five strategies (BLRT (p) < 0.001, LMR (p) = 0.79, AIC = 5611.34, BIC = 6302.39, SSA-BIC = 5703.65, Entropy = 0.938): (1) fully outsourcing to grandparents, (2) partially outsourcing to grandparents, with the husband filling in the gap, (3) the husband does it all, (4) egalitarian remote workers, and (5) a neo-traditional strategy. Nurses who applied the egalitarian strategy had less psychological distress and relationship tension and better performance than those who applied the neo-traditional strategy and performed most of the childcare. The “husband does it all” strategy and the outsourcing strategies seem to have double-edged effects, with better job performance and family relations but also more distress and fewer sleeping hours among nurses. Overall, with a view to future risk mitigation, policymakers and practitioners should be aware of the diversity of the work–family strategies among nurse families during the lockdown period, and their association with individual and family outcomes, and provide tailored support. Full article

In this article, we intend to understand and discuss how immigrant men and women living in Portugal perceive their contributions to the performance of unpaid work and how they try to deal with the situation of the greater burden on women. To this end, a qualitative methodology was used to conduct an exploratory study with 10 focus groups of immigrant men and women in five regions of the country: North, Centre, Lisbon, Alentejo and Algarve. The participants, 43 females and 27 males, were aged between 19 and 80 years. From the discourse of the immigrant participants in this study, it could be concluded that the division of unpaid work between immigrant women and men is not equal, as their statements evidenced a greater responsibility and overload on women. From a traditional vision of gender roles, a persistent dichotomy of two worlds could be perceived, based on a “naturalized” vision of the social roles of gender and on a distribution grounded in biological differences. In parallel, discourses show a change in the sharing of household chores and childcare. However, this does not always occur regularly and appears very much associated with the entry of women into the paid labour market. Full article

This paper examines whether the expansion of working from home led to a more equal division of domestic work during the pandemic. We use unique data of dual-earner heterosexual couples gathered during the first lockdown in the UK when workers were required to work from home by law. Results reveal that mothers were likely to be carrying out a larger share of domestic work both before and during the lockdown. When fathers worked from home, compared to those going into work, a more equitable division was found for cleaning and routine childcare. Furthermore, homeworking fathers were up to 3.5 times more likely to report that they increased the time they spent on childcare during the lockdown compared to before. However, we also found evidence of homeworking mothers having increased their time spent on domestic work, and doing a larger share of routine childcare, compared to mothers going into work. Overall, the study shows that when working from home is normalised through law and practice, it may better enable men to engage more in domestic work, which can in turn better support women’s labour market participation. However, without significant changes to our work cultures and gender norms, homeworking still has the potential to enable or maintain a traditional division of labour, further exacerbating gender inequality patterns both at home and in the labour market. Full article

Suicide mortality in Japan reduced in the period of 2009–2018. A number of studies identified the impact of financial governmental support for social welfare systems on suicide mortality; however, the detailed effects of specific regional policies, designed according to regional cultural, economic, education and welfare situations, on suicide mortality remain to be clarified. Therefore, the present study analyses the associations between the regional governmental expenditure of six major divisions, “public health”, “public works”, “police”, “ambulance/fire services”, “welfare” and “education”, and suicide mortalities caused by six major suicidal motives, related to “family”, “health”, “economy”, “employment”, “romance” and “school”, across the 47 prefectures in Japan during the period of 2009–2018, using fixed-effect analysis of hierarchal linear regression with robust standard error. The expenditure of “public works” displayed a positive relationship with suicide mortality of females caused by family-related motives but was not related to other suicide mortalities, whereas the expenditures in “public health”, “police”, “ambulance/fire services”, “welfare” and “education” contributed to a reduction in suicide mortality, at least in some statistical indicators. The expenditures of both “ambulance/fire” and “education” were predominantly effective among the six major divisions of regional governmental expenditure in reducing suicide mortalities. In the education subdivisions, the expenditure of “kindergarten” was related to a reduction in suicide mortalities caused by a wide spectrum of motives. The amount of expenditure of welfare indicated the limited possibility of facilitating a reduction in suicide mortalities caused by only motives associated with economy or employment. However, in the welfare subdivisions, the expenditure of “child welfare” and “social welfare” was effective in reducing suicide mortalities, but the expenditure of “elderly welfare” was unexpectedly related to an increase in suicide mortalities. These results suggest that most Japanese people are struggling to bring up children even in the situation of an increasing elderly population with a decreasing birth rate. Therefore, it is important to enhance the investment welfare policy for the future to improve the childcare environment. Although the issue of an increasing elderly population and a decreasing birth rate in Japan has not yet improved, the obtained results suggest that evidence-based welfare expenditure redistributions of prefectures and municipalities could improve Japanese society and welfare systems. Full article

Recently, several studies reported that the governmental financial expenditures play important roles in the prevention of increasing suicide mortalities; however, the specific regional policies, designed dependent on regional cultural, economic, education and welfare backgrounds, affect suicide mortality by a specific suicidal means. Therefore, the present study determined the impacts of the regional governmental expenditure of six major divisions, “public health”, “public works”, “police”, “ambulance/fire services”, “welfare” and “education” on suicide mortalities by five major suicidal means, “hanging”, “poisoning”, “charcoal burning”, “jumping” and “throwing”, across the 47 prefectures in Japan during 2009–2018 using fixed-effect analysis of hierarchal linear regression with robust standard error. The expenditures of “ambulance/fire services” and “education” indicated the negative relation to suicide mortalities by wide-spectrum suicidal means, whereas expenditures of “public works” did not affect suicide mortalities. In the education subdivisions, expenditure of “kindergarten” and “elementary school” indicated the impacts of reduction of suicide mortalities, whereas the expenditures of “special school” for individuals with disabilities unexpectedly contribute to increasing suicide mortalities by poisoning, charcoal burning and throwing of females. Regarding subdivisions of welfare, expenditure of “child welfare” and “social welfare” contributed to a reduction in suicide mortalities, but expenditure of “elderly welfare” surprisingly contributed to increasing suicide mortalities. Furthermore, expenditures of welfare subdivision abolished the negative impacts of the expenditures of educational subdivisions, kindergarten and elementary school, but the positive impact of expenditure of special school on female suicide mortalities was not affected. These results suggest that most Japanese people are struggling to care for children even in the situation of an increasing elderly population with a decreasing birthrate. Therefore, it is important to enhance the investment welfare policy for the future to improve the childcare environment. The results demonstrated by this study suggest that the scientifically evidence-based redistributions of welfare expenditure in regional government, at least partially, provide improvement of Japanese society and welfare systems, under the continuous severe Japanese social concerns associated with increasing elderly population with a decreasing birthrate. Full article