Search Results (39)

The empowerment of women in rural areas implies that they have power and control over their lives and participate in individual and collective decision-making. Empowerment depends on autonomy or the ability to act independently. The lack or weakness of autonomy is due to traditional gender roles in rural communities, which reinforce norms and expectations that restrict women, limiting their empowerment and ability to make informed and effective decisions. This context fosters the creation of unequal power structures and women’s dependence on male figures. This article explores the relationship between autonomy and decision-making capacity in rural women. Through a review using the PRISMA approach, we analysed whether the absence of autonomy limits empowerment and decision-making. A total of 141 records were identified, and after excluding duplicate documents, those with no relation to the population and the purpose of this article, 35 articles with research results were included in this review. The categories addressed were empowerment, autonomy, decision-making and sustainable development, the latter emerging in the reviewed literature. Full article

As digital transformation progresses, schools are increasingly confronted with psychosocial challenges such as technostress, digital overload, and unequal participation in digital (learning) environments. This article investigates the conceptual relevance of digital well-being for school development, particularly in relation to social inequality. Despite growing attention, the term remains theoretically underdefined in educational research—a gap addressed through a theory-driven review. Drawing on a systematic search, 25 key studies were analyzed for their conceptual understanding and refinement of digital well-being, with a focus on educational relevance. Findings suggest that digital well-being constitutes a multidimensional state shaped by individual, media-related, and socio-structural factors. It emerges when individuals are able to successfully manage the demands of digital environments and is closely linked to digital inequality—particularly in terms of access, usage practices, and the resulting opportunities for participation and health promotion. Since the institutional role of schools has thus far received limited attention, this article shifts the focus toward schools as key arenas for negotiating digital norms and practices and calls for an equity-sensitive and health-conscious perspective on school development in the context of digitalization. In doing so, digital well-being is repositioned as a pedagogical cross-cutting issue that requires coordinated efforts across all levels of the education system, highlighting that equitable digital transformation in schools depends on a critical reflection of power asymmetries within society and educational institutions. The article concludes by advocating for the systematic integration of digital well-being into school development processes as a way to support inclusive digital participation and to foster a health-oriented digital school culture. Full article

Wealth and power have been recognized as being unequally concentrated within specific families. While research on social mobility has been limited to defined outcomes (e.g., occupation, income, and education) in specific contexts, the rise of big data has spurred broader network analysis. Using a comprehensive genealogical database of 30 million individuals in the Western Hemisphere, we analyzed how familial background, gender, and occupational domains influence the probability of individuals attaining “fame” in their lifetime. Individuals with famous parents are more likely to become famous themselves, especially males. Unexpectedly, we identified more than 10,000 famous individuals who are closely related, comprising 25.6% of all famous individuals in the entire dataset. While the underlying sample may have representativeness issues, the findings suggest that famous individuals are not isolated figures but often part of broader interconnected family networks. Full article

Background: Gender-based violence (GBV) is one of the most pronounced expressions of the unequal power relations between women and men. As a tool for action against this phenomenon, psychological intervention programs for perpetrators of GVB are offered. This is how reGENER@r was born; it is a two-month program based on psychoeducational and cognitive-behavioral strategies that is part of the alternative measures to GBV-related prison sentences. The purpose of this study is to assess the efficacy of the reGENER@r program on the variables of emotional intelligence, empathy, coping responses, emotional dependency, gender role conflict, and sexist beliefs. Method: To this end, a sample of 37 subjects convicted of crimes of GBV was collected, and a pre- and post-evaluation by means of self-report was carried out. Changes were examined for statistical significance and clinical significance. Results: Significant improvements were observed in the variables of cognitive avoidance, emotional attention, hostile sexism, and distorted thoughts about women and the use of violence. Conclusions: Limitations and implications of these findings are discussed, and some modifications are suggested such as making interventions longer, with a greater gender focus, adapted to the individual characteristics of the participants, and complemented with individual sessions. Full article

Climate change presents a critical global crisis, characterized by rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and shifting climate patterns. Vulnerable populations bear a disproportionate share of these impacts, with women at heightened risk due to unequal access to resources, decision-making power, and social roles. Postpartum women specifically face further unique challenges as they strive to protect their children, amplifying the psychological toll of climate change. The current study explores climate distress in a sample of 101 postpartum women in Australia (M_age = 31.14 years), whose youngest child was (on average) 5 months of age, examining factors associated with their psychological responses to climate threats. Correlational analyses reveal that perceptions of threat severity (r = 0.621, p ≤ 0.01) and susceptibility (r = 0.695, p ≤ 0.01) are strongly linked to climate distress. These findings highlight the need to further investigate the distinct psychological pathways climate-related anxiety operates through in postpartum women. The study underscores the importance of targeted interventions to support this vulnerable population as they face increasing climate-related stressors. Full article

Most studies of the religio-racial constellation begin with the medieval taxonomy of Christians, ‘Jews’, ‘pagans’ and ‘heretics’. Some scholars examine how this medieval taxonomy functioned as a system of dehumanization in the Middle Ages; others are more interested in how it has been adopted and adapted in modern racist taxonomies; and still others examine how religious images continue to influence the way non-white, non-European, non-Christian, and non-secular bodies are seen and treated today. What is lacking in the literature to date is an in-depth examination of how this fourfold taxonomy came to be. To understand how modern racialized taxonomies incorporated the earlier “religious” categories—a question that is beyond the scope of this article—we also need to better understand the genealogy of these religious categories, their scope, and their implication in processes of unequal power distribution. To that end, we must address the following questions: Where did the distinction between true and false religion come from; how did the figure of the pagan emerge; what about the Jews as anti-Christian? Rather than focusing on contemporary expressions of religio-racialization, or directing our attention to modern or even late medieval expressions of the religio-racial constellation, this article turns to the period of early Christianity when Christian apologists created the key religionized taxonomies that would shape the way Christians imagined, related to, and, in a later stage of history, governed Christianity’s others: the Jews, the heretics, and the pagans. Full article

Ambient air vaporizers (AVVs) are the most commonly used type of heat exchanger for cryogenic regasification stations. The transfer of heat from the environment for heating the liquefied gas and its vaporization is a cost-free and efficient method. Designing ambient air vaporizers for regasification or fueling stations requires accepting the size and related thermal power of the AVV considering the operating conditions and the type of liquefied gases to be vaporized. The nominal capacity of the ambient air vaporizer depends on its design, the frosting of longitudinal finned tubes, and the airflow through the vaporizer structure. This paper presents the results of experimental studies and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis on determining the heat output of AVV longitudinal finned tubes depending on their design. This experiment was conducted in order to establish a numerical model. The relation between the longitudinal finned tubes thermal power and the air flow velocity is demonstrated and the beneficial effect of forced convection is proved. The obtained results are used for verification calculations of ambient air vaporizers’ performance depending on the size of the AVV, the profile cross-section, and the airflow velocity for different liquefied gases. Under conditions of forced convection, profiles with 12 equal-height fins were discovered to be the most efficient for higher airflow velocity providing up to 7% higher heat rate than profiles with 8 equal-height fins. However, at low air velocity, profiles with 8 equal-length fins showed a comparable heat output to profiles with 12 equal-length fins. Profiles with 8 and 12 unequal high fins differ in average heat output by about 28%. The profile with 12 unequal high fins turned out to be the least effective when 2D airflow was considered in this analysis. Full article

In this paper, a solution is proposed to the problem of the unequal phase imbalance of output voltage caused by a three-phase, four-wire, split capacitor inverter when the load is unbalanced. First, the triple-loop control strategy was used to solve the unequal amplitude problem. This method used the feedforward + feedback composite control strategy on the inductor current inner-loop and voltage mid-loop to decrease the disturbance of the power and load. And the Root Mean Square (RMS) of voltage on the outer-loop completed the control of amplitude for the three-phase voltage. Second, to solve the imbalanced phase problem, the imbalance operation mechanism of the three-phase four-wire inverter was analyzed. It is known from the analysis that the phase imbalance is related to the DC-side splitting capacitance. The function relations between the DC-side capacitance and phase angle between each phase was simulated by MATLAB. But, it was too complicated to calculate the magnitude of the capacitance value through the functional relationship. In order to simplify the design of the DC-side splitting capacitor, the relations among the imbalanced current, the voltage fluctuations of the DC-side capacitor and the harmonics of load voltage were analyzed. In addition, by following the requirement of the national standard about the harmonics of load voltage, a DC-side capacitor design was mentioned to decrease the influence of imbalanced phase. Finally, simulation and experimental results show that the three-phase load voltage is stable, the THD value is less than 3%, and three-phase voltage unbalance is less than 2%, thus verifying the effectiveness of the proposed DC-side split capacitor design and control strategy. Full article

The internationalisation of higher education (IoHE) has become a prominent topic in higher education research. While there is increasing institutional and governmental commitment to IoHE, it is important to consider the actual outcomes of these processes critically. Despite the significant issues raised by the academic migration of professors, researchers, and post-docs regarding migratory trajectories and epistemological aspects of scholarly work, this area of research remains understudied. This article adopted a qualitative approach, drawing on semi-structured interviews with migrant scholars pursuing academic careers in Portugal. Our findings suggest that a complex interplay of factors influences the pursuit of an academic career by migrants, including the influence of institutional and governmental policies regarding science and the impact of marketisation of higher education institutions that have jeopardised academic career possibilities. Moreover, science and academic-related work seem to be the main drivers in pursuing an academic career for migrant scholars rather than primarily career-focused and economic strategies. Notwithstanding, our study highlighted the challenges that migrant academics face at the epistemological level, pointing out that their experiences are embedded in neocolonial logics that are further aggravated by current unequal societal arrangements related to what constitutes valid and legitimate knowledge and the power relations therein. Full article

Development actors in West Africa have been promoting agroecological farming as a solution to combat climate change and to create more sovereign food systems that enhance the autonomy of local smallholders. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding the actual implementation of such programs and their potential to empower smallholders, especially in the West African region. Drawing on co-produced knowledge from anthropological fieldwork in Western Senegal, the case study of an alternative food network explores the interlinkages between the promotion of agroecology, anti-migration policies, and unequal power and market relations. Informed by decolonial political ecologies, the analysis reveals different layers of coloniality which complicate embodied effects on horticultural smallholders. The authors conclude that instead of fostering the emancipation of smallholders, development actors promote a labor-intensive and unprofitable way of farming that exploits local resources for the sake of green agendas and white markets. This article highlights the need for a critical reflection on the potential limitations of agroecology and calls for a more nuanced approach that considers the complex realities of smallholders in West Africa. Full article

The Lisa and John Slideshow is a theatrical response to my own earlier photographic project, Pictures from the Real World. Colour Photographs, 1987–88, interrogating recurring theoretical questions that challenge the discourse of social documentary photography through an expanded practice. As a significant piece of research, devised through participation with those depicted within the image, the forty-five-minute play questions representational methods through an alternate medium. The project evokes what else was knowable from the terrain of possibilities when the sovereign images of the former project were captured, as it reaches into photographs, opening contextual focus on the social, political and relational aspects of production. This paper is drawn from my Ph.D. thesis, What the Subject Does. Lisa and John and Pictures from the Real World submitted to the University of Sussex in December 2022. The question asked within this commentary is: How can unequal power relations within photographic representation of working-class communities be renegotiated through trans-media practice and the use of theatre? Full article

Past research on English-medium instruction (EMI) has primarily focused on language-related challenges with scant attention paid to how language is entangled with epistemic access and epistemic injustice. Informed by the perspective of “epistemic (in)justice”, this study focused on how a cohort of students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds negotiate a more epistemologically effective and equal access to knowledge negotiation in an EMI international relations master’s program in a Chinese university. Data were drawn from classroom observation, semi-structured interviews, and students’ reflexive journals. Qualitative thematic analysis of the data revealed unequal power relations in students’ epistemic participation and their resulting epistemic silence in classroom discussions. By illustrating how students cope with the epistemic challenges by drawing on individual-cognitive and social-cognitive resources, the findings suggest potential strategies for transnational students to counter the hegemony of English in EMI learning contexts. Implications for decoloniality in EMI education are discussed. Full article

Wildlife residing in cities has made encounters between humans and wild animals a common phenomenon. The perspective of the conflict-laden animal–human relationship has been over-emphasized by traditional media, which neglects the peaceful and harmonious daily encounters between residents and urban wildlife. This paper addresses the lacuna in extant literature by examining the virtual encounters between urban residents and wildlife on TikTok by sharing the living habits of Falco tinnunculus. Participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, and text analysis were adopted to explore the knowledge production process of urban wildlife as well as the emotional response of audiences. We found that displaying urban wildlife in short videos is a dynamic process involving the mutual participation of wildlife and humans. Meanwhile, audiences’ anthropocentric gaze of wildlife via TikTok attends to their desires for intimacy with nature and demonstrates the unequal and unbalanced power between wild animals and humans. These findings suggest that more efforts should be made to guide the public to pay attention to native urban wildlife species and to reflect upon the ethics and rationality of such unequal power relations between wild animals and humans. Full article

The division of labor within married couples in ministerial professions is a special case of gender-specific division of labor. Since their relationship is marital and professional at the same time, the divisions of professional and familiar tasks are interconnected. Previous research demonstrates that, in such cases, gender roles may override professional status, which implies that clergywomen may easily fall into the traditional role of the pastor’s wife. Through semi-structured in-depth interviews with female members of ministerial couples in Hungary, we explore the professional and family roles, divisions of labor, and power relations that characterize relationships where both spouses are clergy. Based on these interviews, we identify three different career strategies which clergywomen use to cope with the tension between their emancipatory role as clergywomen and the traditional expectations of a clergyman’s wife: (1) the Conformist Strategy, (2) the Conformist with a Second Career Strategy, and (3) the Co-equals Strategy. Our results also demonstrate that unequal relations in professional and family tasks are reinforced by traditional gender roles typical for Hungary in general and for Hungarian clergy in particular. Full article

The phenomenon of voltage asymmetry is common in electricity networks and is the cause of many unfavourable phenomena occurring, such as an increase in power and energy losses, as well as the abnormal operation of certain loads. Voltage asymmetry can be caused by several different factors, which include the design of the transmission line (e.g., routing of conductors in relation to each other and the earth), the parameters of consumer circuits (e.g., unequal loading of individual phases), or the design of network equipment (e.g., generators or transformers). An asymmetrical condition also occurs during system disturbances such as single-phase short circuits or lightning. One of the many factors impinging on voltage asymmetry in the electrical network is also the effect of load, but in the case of medium voltage power networks, this effect is neglected in the literature. This paper presents and evaluates the influence of the power consumed by consumers on the values of zero-voltage asymmetry factor indices in medium voltage compensated power networks with the neutral point earthed by an inductance (Petersen coil) operating with wind and photovoltaic power plants. Full article