Search Results (226)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the modern workplace by offering unprecedented opportunities to enhance employee creativity and organizational innovation. In the context of digital transformation, organizations are striving to ensure sustainable performance; however, research remains limited on how perceived AI fairness and attitudes toward AI jointly influence creativity. Grounded in Social Exchange Theory and the Technology Acceptance Model, this study proposes a moderated mediation model to examine how perceived AI fairness shapes employees’ attitudes toward AI and, in turn, their creativity, with gender acting as a moderator of the relationship between fairness perceptions and attitudes toward AI. Data were collected from 214 highly skilled employees from diverse cultural backgrounds working in technologically advanced environments. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), the findings reveal a positive association between perceived AI fairness and creativity. Attitudes toward AI partially mediate this relationship; however, gender does not exert a significant moderating effect. The findings highlight the importance of AI fairness, reinforced by positive attitudes toward AI, in enhancing employee creativity. They also underscore the need for responsible and equitable AI practices and provide context-specific insights into the ethical challenges of AI in socio-technologically vulnerable environments. Finally, the findings point to a shift toward a more egalitarian and inclusive organizational landscape, in which gender differences become less salient in the context of digital transformation. Full article

This article juxtaposes the Indigenous communitarian feminist concept cuerpo-territorio and the African proverb musha mukadzi drawing on ethnographic research with Zimbabwean women activists in the context of land reform, thereby expanding the scope of both concepts. Our entry point is Zimbabwean women’s struggles for land in the Third Chimurenga, or post-2000 Fast-Track Land Reform Programme. Despite egalitarian promises, land redistribution efforts have favored political elites and men, reinforcing colonial capitalist practices of extraction and accumulation. Our comparative exercise reveals musha mukadzi as a political discourse that enables Indigenous women to reclaim their body–land relationship through struggles for land reform and beyond. In the process, we identify four key resonances between musha mukadzi and cuerpo-territorio, namely, an ontological similarity expressed through Indigenous women’s commitments to and responsibilities for re/generating the network of life; a common appeal to ancestral (feminist) wisdom to enhance ongoing struggle; the political mobilization of the concepts by Indigenous women to seek liberation from patriarchal, neo/colonial oppression; and, their conceptual utility as feminist analytics. Finally, we lay the foundation for further work on the possibilities of transnational feminist solidarity between Indigenous women in Africa and Abya Yala. Full article

Gender-based and sexual violence are major public health concerns, and norms about consent are central to their prevention. This study examines how attitudes toward sexual consent relate to digital sexual consent and to the occasional feeling of distrust in public consent campaigns and institutions. We conducted a cross-sectional online survey embedded in the evaluation of a municipal consent campaign in Zaragoza (Spain). Adults (N = 404; 56.7% women) completed a 14-item short version of the Sexual Consent Scale–Revised, two items on digital sexual consent, and three items on institutional reluctance (perceived “sermonizing” tone, distrust in effectiveness, and lack of personal identification with the message). Correlation and multiple regression models with robust standard errors were estimated, controlling for gender, age, education, income, relationship status, and social media use. Attitudes toward sexual consent were strongly and positively associated with digital sexual consent. Gender was the most consistent sociodemographic correlate: men showed less egalitarian attitudes than women across all consent measurements. Institutional reluctance was systematically related to less supportive consent attitudes: perceiving institutional messages as exaggerated or personally irrelevant predicted lower support for sexual and digital consent norms, whereas trust in the campaign’s effectiveness was associated with more egalitarian attitudes. The findings support the continuity between sexual and digital consent and highlight gender and institutional trust as key determinants for the prevention of gender-based and sexual violence. Public health and social policies should integrate digital consent into consent education and co-design campaigns that minimize defensive reactions and rebuild trust in institutions. Full article

Through the combined lenses of ecofeminism, masculinity studies, and critical animal studies, this article examines the cultural functions of animal metamorphosis in two Walt Disney animated feature films, Beauty and the Beast and The Princess and the Frog. It argues that animality operates as a narrative and symbolic space in which dominant gender norms and human–animal hierarchies are temporarily destabilized and reconfigured. Drawing on film analysis, this study shows how the animal figure enables the emergence of alternative masculinities—sensitive, relational, and ecologically attuned—while simultaneously exposing the structural limits of this apparent subversion. Although these films challenge toxic masculinity and propose more egalitarian interspecific relationships, their narrative resolutions ultimately reinstate anthropocentric and heteronormative frameworks by reasserting human centrality and normative romantic closure. By situating Disney’s representations within broader Western dualistic logics of domination (culture/nature, masculine/feminine, human/animal), I demonstrate that animality functions less as an autonomous mode of existence than as a transitional narrative device facilitating human self-transformation. In doing so, this article contributes to current discussions on how culturally mediated representations of animals shape human social imaginaries, ethical frameworks, and understandings of interspecies relationships. Full article

Mobility and its infrastructure represent challenges for contemporary society. It is necessary to promote collective public transport and active mobility, because they contribute to improving accessibility in cities and the well-being of society. The objectives of this research are (1) to analyze the perception of the population of Cartagena, Colombia, in relation to public transport safety; (2) to highlight the level of knowledge about legislation or regulations related to mobility and their participation in the adoption of planning tools for implementation; and (3) to analyze the proposed initiatives to achieve a more equitable, egalitarian, fair, inclusive, and sustainable mobility. The results emanate from a digital survey conducted with 828 people from different neighborhoods and socioeconomic strata in Cartagena. Regarding the first objective, the findings indicate that almost one-third of the respondents consider public transport unsafe or very unsafe. Public transport is perceived as more unsafe by women than men. In terms of the second objective, there is limited knowledge of mobility regulations (56% did not know or did not respond) and low citizen participation (12%) in the adoption of planning tools. Concerning the third objective, the results showed 54 initiatives oriented toward institutional strengthening and undertaking a more equitable, egalitarian, fair, inclusive and sustainable mobility. Full article

This article explores how young women of colour in Norway navigate everyday racism and how such negotiations are shaped by the tension between speaking out or maintaining social harmony in a society that largely perceives itself as egalitarian and non-racist. The study draws on qualitative interviews with 13 participants from diverse ethnic backgrounds—some were adopted, and others were children of immigrant parents or immigrants themselves. The analysis examines how anti-racism strategies are shaped by drawing on feminist and postcolonial theory, particularly the concept of the feminist killjoy. The notion of Orientalism, and the notion of cultural repertoires. The findings show that participants demonstrated different reactions from silence to confrontation, all demanding emotional labour. Several participants described the burden of having to choose between remaining polite and educating others, while others chose silence as a protective strategy. Rather than viewing resistance as a binary between silence and confrontation, this study demonstrates that everyday anti-racism is a fluid and context-dependent practice. How women performed anti-racism was also closely linked to their social position, social support, cultural norms, and access to political perspectives. The stories show that, over time, some women became more outspoken or secure in their interpretations of racist encounters, especially when gaining distance from constraining environments. Full article

Living in the shadow of ‘Iddu’, the Stromboli volcano, requires a unique cultural adaptation. This study explores the risk perception of the permanent residents of Stromboli Island (Italy), a complex multi-hazard environment where persistent volcanic activity coexists with tsunami threats. Adopting a qualitative design based on 17 semi-structured interviews and focus groups (May 2024), we analysed residents’ narratives through the Cultural Theory of Risk. The findings reveal a hybrid risk culture: a dominant individualistic orientation (37%), driven by self-reliance, is balanced by a strong egalitarian ethos (33%) rooted in community solidarity. The analysis highlights three critical dynamics: (1) the normalization of volcanic risk versus the fear of rare tsunami events; (2) a ‘Trust Gap’ between the community’s horizontal preparedness strategies and the institutions’ vertical communication protocols; and (3) an ‘Economic Filter’ imposed by tourism, which creates a cognitive dissonance where risk is privately acknowledged but publicly downplayed. The study concludes that effective Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) cannot rely solely on top-down technology but must integrate local knowledge and participatory approaches to bridge the distance between scientific monitoring and community experience. Full article

Objective: This metasynthesis analyzes the current evidence on the perceptions of sexism among video game players (men and women) and the video game industry. Methods: The databases Scopus and ProQuest were used to select 15 qualitative studies in a final analysis. The analysis used the reciprocal translation technique to analyze and interpret the data. Results: Three primary themes emerged: normalized violence in gamer environments (n = 13), strategies to confront sexism/gender harassment (n = 10), and internal ambivalence and tension (n = 10). The results show that female videogame players experience daily hostility due to the fact of being women in an environment of male dominance. This leads to recurring confrontations, which can result in female video game players being questioned in terms of identity and behavior by both themselves and the community. Conclusions: This metasynthesis suggests that sexism in online video game environments is not an isolated phenomenon and directly affects the experience of female video game players. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of further exploring the perceptions and experiences of different groups within gamer communities, in order to make progress towards a more egalitarian and diverse culture. Full article

Research on men’s mental health points out gender differences in help-seeking and access to care. Traditional masculine norms (i.e., emotional repression, self-reliance, “being strong”) and gender bias might conceal distress, delay treatment, and help to explain higher burdens of addiction, violence, and suicide alongside lower recorded affective/anxiety diagnoses. An exploratory narrative review was conducted. PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched for 2015–2025 studies using MeSH and terms on men’s mental health, masculinities, and stigma. Eleven studies identified attitudinal barriers (i.e., self-stigma, shame, symptom minimization, mistrust, etc.) and structural barriers (i.e., limited tailored services, navigation difficulties, costs, bureaucracy, etc.) that delay identification of psychological distress symptoms, weaken therapeutic alliance, and increase dropout, especially when therapy is perceived as impersonal or ineffective. Intersectional factors (i.e., class, age, ethnicity) further contribute to access and they need to be included in the field of men’s mental health. Gender-sensitive approaches and alternative masculinity role models have the potential to enhance engagement and legitimize emotional experience. To sum up, hegemonic masculinity-related gender norms, acquired through gender-differentiated socialization, are associated with adverse mental health outcomes among men. A lack of gender-sensitive awareness campaigns to reduce stigma around men’s mental health may hinder prevention, delaying early identification and timely intervention. Therefore, men’s mental health care should integrate gender and intersectionality transversally to improve prevention, access, diagnosis, treatment, adherence, and outcomes, supported by professional training and tailored therapeutic tools in clinical routine practice. These findings underscore the need to promote healthier, more egalitarian masculinities and to deconstruct stigmas associated with help-seeking and mental health service. Full article

This article draws on research in a Norwegian municipality to examine the affective aspects of teaching gifted students and to explore how systemic and cultural norms surrounding gifted education in Norway may shape teachers’ perceptions and practices. Teacher well-being is a concern for educational quality and sustainability, yet in gifted education, it is often overlooked. Giftedness refers to a high ability to learn faster, more complex or in greater depth than same-age peers when adequately supported. In Norway, teachers face contradictory signals concerning teaching the gifted: definitional ambiguity, limited training, strong egalitarian norms that make giftedness a contested category, and, at the same time, a strong principle of inclusive adapted education for all. Those combined may lead to ethical tensions that challenge teachers’ professional integrity and well-being. Such conditions can reduce teachers’ handlingsrom, meaning their space (room) for professional agency, within institutional, cultural, and policy frameworks. To investigate how such pressures shape teacher’s well-being, this study synthesises findings from four interrelated sub-studies conducted within a single research project on gifted education. Using a meta-ethnographic approach, we translated and integrated insights from the sub-studies to develop higher-order constructs not visible in the individual analyses. The synthesis identified three key dynamics: conceptual ambiguity, ethical strain under cross-pressure, and buffers as recalibrators of demands and resources. Together, these insights informed the Cross-Pressure Model for Teacher Well-being (CP-Well Model) developed in this study, which positions teacher integrity at the centre of professional well-being. We argue that teacher well-being in gifted education may depend less on individual resilience and more on systemic, cultural, and policy conditions. Addressing these cross-pressures requires structural change, supportive leadership, and sustained professional development to enable teachers to work with integrity. Full article

Critics often cast the Creole woman of color in Lafcadio Hearn’s circum-Caribbean writings as a figure of cultural moribundity—an emblem of a Creole world fading under the pressures of modernization. However, Hearn also presents Creole women as vivacious counterdecadent agents, disruptors of the political decline experienced by Martinique’s white Creoles after citizenship was restored to the colony’s men of African descent. Through historical contextualization of Hearn’s periodical writing and his correspondence with journalist Elizabeth Bisland, this paper explains why he employs the strategies of Decadent conservatism to imagine a moment in which formerly enslaved Creole women prevent an iconoclastic Republican attack on a sculpture of the Empress Joséphine. Erected in a reactionary period after slavery’s abolition, this monument originally commemorated the reinstatement of plantocratic dominance over the Black population, but by the time Hearn saw the statue, it had become an ironic reminder of weakened white authority. The imagined actions of Hearn’s Creole women resignify the monument, making its survival attest to the limited victory of Republican egalitarianism and the survival of pre-modern traditions of racial deference. Full article

What if future teachers could learn to read the world like art historians, reason about it like mathematicians, and engage with it as sustainable change-makers? Through the lens of STEAM-H, this study examines their potential to become transformative educators fostering critical thinking and spatial–geometric competencies. The aim is to analyse how future teachers demonstrate Critical Spatial Literacy (CSL) skills—such as spatial literacy, critical thinking, and onto-semiotic dimensions—when carrying out hermeneutic readings of works of art and constructing models from AI-generated images within the framework of Critical–Visual Maker (CVM) Culture. This qualitative-descriptive study examines evidence from students’ analyses of pairs of classical and contemporary artworks, as well as models linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), applying CSL categories in both cases. The findings reveal a transition from formal descriptions in mathematics and art history to more complex critical interpretations. Furthermore, the interrelationship among the three groups of categories proposed in the theoretical framework becomes evident. The study concludes that, by engaging in reflective and critical questioning, the interaction between STEAM-H, CSL, and CVM Culture can constitute an effective educational ecosystem for fostering geometric creativity, critical spatial literacy, and interdisciplinarity, thereby contributing to the development of a critical and egalitarian citizenship committed to global challenges and sustainable futures. Full article

Zero-sum beliefs about human–nature relations represent a relatively understudied psychological construct that can shape prosocial behaviours directed toward both the natural environment and humans. Yet, little is known about the individual difference factors that contribute to these beliefs. This study investigates whether Need for Cognition, Tolerance of Ambiguity, and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) predict zero-sum beliefs about the human–nature relationship (ZSB-NH). A cross-sectional, online survey (N = 355 Australians, M_Age = 52.77) assessed Need for Cognition, Tolerance of Ambiguity, SDO, and ZSB-NH, with hierarchical multiple regression revealing that together, Need for Cognition, Tolerance of Ambiguity, and SDO explained 29.9% of the variance in ZSB-NH. However, only SDO, and specifically SDO-Anti-Egalitarianism, significantly predicted ZSB-NH, with a positive and large effect. Need for Cognition and Tolerance of Ambiguity were not significant predictors of ZSB-NH, despite significant negative correlations with ZSB-NH, highlighting the importance of multivariate research to reveal the true effects of these predictors. The findings contribute to the limited research on ZSB-NH, suggesting that interventions should target hierarchical attitudes to influence zero-sum beliefs about the human relationship with nature. Full article

This study examined how ethnic-racial socialization (ERS)—cultural-egalitarianism, preparation for bias, and promotion of mistrust—mediate the influence of neighborhood and parental cultural contexts on youth self-esteem and ethnic-racial identity (ERI). Participants included 184 youth (Mage = 13.38; 57.5% female) and 144 parents (Mage = 40.62) from Black and Latino families living in a new destination context. Data were analyzed using multiple group path analysis. Findings revealed distinct patterns for Black and Latino families. Neighborhood disadvantage was negatively associated with preparation for bias and promotion of mistrust beliefs. Neighborhood diversity was positively related to promotion of mistrust, while neighborhood cohesion positively influenced cultural-egalitarianism and preparation for bias beliefs. Each ERS belief was associated with youth perceptions of the corresponding ERS practice. In Latino families, preparation for bias beliefs also supported cultural-egalitarianism practices. ERS practices were linked to youth outcomes. Cultural-egalitarianism was positively associated with self-esteem and, for Latino youth, with centrality and private regard. In contrast, preparation for bias and promotion of mistrust were negatively associated with self-esteem and public regard. Additionally, neighborhood factors, parental discrimination, parental ERI, and ERS beliefs were directly linked to youth self-esteem and ERI. Findings underscore how broader sociocultural contexts shape ERS and, in turn, adolescent development. Full article

This study investigates the use of a hybrid leadership style in three kibbutz factories—two in privatized communities and one in a cooperative community. The factory leaders integrate multiple leadership styles in managing their enterprises. This blended style reflects a hybrid approach to management that has democratic and autocratic elements as well as a transformational leadership style that is also community-oriented. The goals of the managers are to make the factory operations sustainable while remaining loyal to communal values. We conducted 75 interviews in the three kibbutzim with individuals from various ranks, ranging from senior leadership to production workers. In addition, to supplement the information, we analyzed organizational documents, including internal newsletters, reports, and booklets summarizing 50 years of activity, as well as news articles that provided up-to-date information on business transactions that contributed to the success of the kibbutz industries. The result identified a hybrid style that combines the communal, transformational, and democratic or autocratic styles. Many features of communal leadership were evident in the practices of kibbutz members rather than those of outsiders and by strategies focused on maintaining the industry for kibbutz members in the long run and an egalitarian communal style. The hybrid style contains democratic features such as transparent and open communication, and a transformational style was also found in key components of this leadership style, including innovation, professionalism, dynamism, adaptability to environmental changes, and human sensitivity. Full article