In this article we provide an introduction to the papers in the special section of this edition of the
European Journal of Development Research
. We start by framing the challenges posed by female ...entrepreneurship to the research community, note some of the findings in the literature pertaining to the cross-national understanding of female entrepreneurship, and review the existing literature on the role and experience of female entrepreneurs in developing countries. Despite progress in understanding the motivations, constraints and issues that confront female entrepreneurs, there is still substantial scope for further research. We then discuss four papers that advance this research agenda.
Studies show that the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions had disproportionately negative impacts on the majority of the world's workers who work informally, and on women informal workers ...in particular. This reflects the interplay between the pandemic, existing decent work deficits in informal employment, and discriminatory gendered norms within and outside the workplace. Based on a sample of 1,935 informal workers from a mixed-method longitudinal study across 12 cities in 2020 and 2021 conducted by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), this article finds that the gendered impacts on informal workers within and between occupational sectors observed in the initial three months have persisted over a year and half into the pandemic, and explores the reasons for the gender-differentiated impacts. It then considers the specific demands made by informal workers to the state, highlighting the ways in which sector and gender mediate workers' policy needs. Finally, it provides evidence of the role of member-based organisations of informal workers in responding directly to the needs of women workers, and on making claims on the state to fulfil these needs.
In this article, we develop a gender-specific crosswalk based on dual-coded Current Population Survey data to bridge the change in the census occupational coding system that occurred in 2000 and use ...it to provide the first analysis of the trends in occupational segregation by sex for the 1970-2009 period based on a consistent set of occupational codes and data sources. We show that our gender-specific crosswalk more accurately captures the trends in occupational segregation that are masked using the aggregate crosswalk (based on combined male and female employment) provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. Using the 2000 occupational codes, we find that segregation by sex declined substantially over the period but at a diminished pace over the decades, falling by only 1.1 percentage points (on a decadal basis) in the 2000s. A primary mechanism by which segregation was reduced was through the entry of new cohorts of women, presumably better prepared than their predecessors and/or encountering less labor market discrimination; during the 1970s and 1980s, however, occupational segregation also decreased within cohorts. Reductions in segregation were correlated with education, with the largest decrease among college graduates and very little change in segregation among high school dropouts.
In a developing nation like the Philippines, many mothers provide for their families by traveling to a foreign country to care for someone else’s. Families Apart focuses on Filipino overseas workers ...in Canada to reveal what such arrangements mean for families, documenting the difficulties of family separation and the problems that children have when reuniting with their mothers in Vancouver.
This article investigates differences in growth intentions of men and women entrepreneurs. Using data from the U.S. Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics I and II, we test hypotheses informed by ...life course theory regarding the influence of career stage and family status on high growth intentions of men and women entrepreneurs. Results show that young men are especially likely to express high growth intentions, while mothers expressed high growth intentions more frequently than did other women.
La ficción surcoreana televisiva que se ocupa de retratar la vida empresarial bascula entre el drama soap opera, la caricatura deudora de la historieta en línea o webtoon de origen y dramas realistas ...atravesados o no por otros géneros como el thriller o el melodrama. En esta ficción corporativa es posible observar modelos de liderazgo que pueden corresponderse con algunos descritos en manuales corporativos (Competencia Pigmalión, Liderazgo Personalista Integral) y también con propuestas que desde la ética aplicada no renuncian a una ética normativa que sea tanto de mínimos como de máximos, como la Ética de la razón cordial, Ética Cordial (Cortina, 2009). Ambos modelos de liderazgo y propuesta ética servirán para el análisis de dos ficciones televisivas surcoreanas recientes - Luces Nocturnas (Bulyaseong, White Nights, 2016) y Search: WWW (Geomsaekeoreul Ibryeokhaseyo, 2019) - que ponen sobre la mesa el incremento de conciencia en su sociedad de la situación de las mujeres profesionales cuyas vidas proyectan. El perfilado moral e incremento de realismo en la caracteriología de los personajes desde la CEO Yi-Kiung Seo (Luces nocturnas) a Ta mi Bae (Search) se debe al paso de un guionista, Ji-hoon Han, al avance que supone la incorporación de más guionistas a la industria hallyu como Eun Sol Kwon. Además, Search: WWW acusa el cambio social vivido en el país después del Feminist Reboot que siguió al asesinato de la estación Gagnam que ha llevado a todas las industrias del hallyu a replantearse sus condiciones de igualdad de género.
Traditionally, accounting has been described as a gendered profession. Recently, accounting firms, and especially the Big Four, have made very public commitments to promote greater gender equality. ...Yet they struggle to retain women, especially at more senior levels. Drawing on a recent empirical field study of managers in one of the Big Four accounting firms (pseudonym Sky Accounting), we explore the effects of a flexible work initiative that was developed with the aim of creating “the best professional workplace for women”. The paper addresses the flexibility program as a key organizational practice that was specifically designed to enhance the progression and retention of talented women at senior levels. We show how the initiative that was designed to challenge the status quo was, in practice, translated into a mechanism that actually reinforced gender barriers. In order to theorize our findings, we draw on contemporary theoretical approaches to gender from both accounting and organization theory and suggest several critical reflections on the dynamics of bringing about change in relation to gender inequality.
PDF
