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Gender inequality in employment, pay and leadership positions continue to be a major issue around the world, particularly in many Asian countries such as Japan. To understand the root causes of such inequality better and to synthesize recommendations on what employers can do to integrate, develop, and retain women in the workforce better, we conducted a literature review and interviewed female workers, including managers. We provide new insights by conceptualizing the relationship between women and work from an identity perspective. Our findings from interviews revealed striking differences in the identities, work attitudes and career goals of highly qualified Japanese women. We classified the identities of women into four groups: the Careerist, the Conflicted, the Functionalist and the Caregiver. To better attract, motivate and retain women, employers may provide individualized human resource management practices that meet the demands of the different types of career women.

This study seeks to understand how work–life balance (WLB) changes over time, and if relational factors – relationship and sexual satisfaction – may have protective effects. Grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s (1986) family ecological theory a linear mixed effects analysis was used to analyze over 4,000 individual reports of WLB over three years.

The primary finding showed that on average, individuals rated their WLB just above average and their scores decrease over time. While relationship satisfaction did not have significant associations with WLB alone, the interaction between relationship and sexual satisfaction was found to be a protective factor, increasing WLB scores. This indicates that having higher sexual satisfaction can enhance the protective effect that relationship satisfaction has on WLB.

An intriguing finding was the significant difference in WLB scores for men compared to women. On average, men experience significantly lower WLB scores. This could be related to how WLB was measured, or possibly due to gender roles. Future research should further explore this relationship.

The results of this study provide information that researchers’ can consider as they design studies and interventions targeting WLB. An additional hope is that employers will consider these results when they create workplace policy and other initiatives.

This study is one of the first to explore WLB in association with relationship and sexual satisfaction and the interaction between sexual and relationship satisfaction. This chapter tests the interactions between mesosystems in a unique way that enhances researchers understanding of WLB.

A straight through wind tunnel sited outdoors was completed in 1963. A 200 h.p. diesel engine gives 75 ft./sec. in the 18‐ft. square section. Models small enough to avoid serious wall constraint are tested statically with fully simulated lift systems to measure the performance and handling characteristics of V.T.O. aircraft at low forward speeds. Intake and jet flows are induced by ejector pumps which occupy representative positions in the engine bay. Engines and airframe are mounted separately to measure loads on tailored balances, and surfaces are extensively pressure plotted. Thus aerodynamic interferences are isolated, giving the physical back‐ground for the formulation of theoretical treatments and calculation methods, involving jet mixing regions and separated flows. Meanwhile empirical data is available for early design work to develop V.T.O. aircraft with useful payload and range. Configurations which minimize the download due to ground effect tend to develop large downloads during the transition manoeuvre. The worst configurations suffer nearly complete loss of the installed vertical thrust, due to aerodynamic interferences on the airframe. Moderate overloading of a V.T.O. aircraft with poor transition performance results in a long take‐off run.

Across the globe, the increasing exploration of women entrepreneurship as an emerging phenomenon has resulted in growing lines of examination that extend across the motivations, challenges, contributions, and strategies for navigating the entrepreneurial space. Despite such advancements in the field, the effects of gender and motherhood on entrepreneurship remain highly under-theorized and under-contextualized, with little appreciation of the spatial and situational realities that they confront. Such is the case for the Caribbean where women and mothers are increasingly entering into entrepreneurship, but where their realities are yet to be understood. In this chapter, we therefore make a case for the use of contextual theorizations that focus on the structural, historical, and cultural aspects of entrepreneurship, and the implications of these for the thinking and action of women entrepreneurs and mumpreneurs in the region. Implications for entrepreneurial research, policy, and practices in the Caribbean are also discussed.

The purpose of this study is to compare the gender gaps in work–life balance satisfaction across occupations. Due to data limitations, the studies of work–life balance satisfaction have generally relied on researcher collected data. As a result, large-scale studies encompassing all occupations in the same social and policy context are rare. In several cycles of the Canadian General Social Survey, the respondents are directly asked about their work–life balance (WLB) satisfaction. The present paper takes advantage of this unique opportunity to compare the gender gap in WLB satisfaction across occupations in Canada.

This paper pools four cross-sectional datasets (N = 37,335). Multivariate regression analysis is used.

Women in management and education are found to have a lower WLB satisfaction than their male counterparts. Conversely, and rather surprisingly, a WLB satisfaction advantage is found for women in transport over males in this occupation. Further investigation shows that the female WLB advantage in transport is driven by the relatively low WLB satisfaction of males in this occupation, while the opposite is true for education.

The findings are discussed in light of the WLB policies and their increasing gender-blindness.

This paper is the first large-scale study which compares the gender gap in WLB satisfaction across occupations, in a given policy context.

Prior research has shown that a work environment that facilitates work-life balance not only benefits the personal lives of employees but also leads to better job performance and ethical decision-making. Allocation of time between career and personal life is an age-old challenge for working people. Work-life balance refers to the manner in which people distribute time between their jobs and other activities, such as family, personal pursuits, and community involvement. This study compares the work-life balance perspectives of current and future accountants. Three research questions are examined. The first relates to the importance accountants place on work-life balance. The second concerns how work-life balance perspectives of current practitioners compare to future accountants. The third considers how gender differences affect work-life balance perspectives. Data for analysis was obtained via a survey of current accounting practitioners and of future accountants (students near graduation). Findings indicate that both current and future accountants believe that a healthy work-life balance is connected to work satisfaction, work performance, and ethical decision-making.

Purpose – To outline new research on the ways in which older athletes incorporate drinking practices into their social and sporting identities. Drawing on research with older Australian athletes, the chapter asks us to re-imagine the sport–alcohol nexus to include new sites and subjects that can shed light on wider articulations of the pleasurable and problematic relationships between sport, alcohol and social identity.

Design/methodology/approach – In the first part of the chapter, key themes in sport and ageing research are discussed. In the second, issues of alcohol, older age and sporting identities are considered, drawing on research at the 2017 Australian Masters Games. This sets the scene for a fuller discussion and analysis of some of the missed opportunities in alcohol and sport research, and their implications for sport and social policy, health promotion and social care more broadly.

Findings – The chapter reveals several under-developed opportunities in a broader research agenda on sport and alcohol, including the role alcohol plays in conferring membership and belonging to the sporting communities of older athletes. The chapter suggests that a recalibration of popular understandings of sport, ageing and alcohol – both as separate and as inter-related concerns – may provide an opportunity for addressing wider social concerns with ageing more broadly.

Research limitations/implications – Discussion of ageing and alcohol, through the lens of sport, has important implications for an analysis of drinking practices and in sport, and for sport and social policy, health promotion and social care.

This chapter advances understandings of emotion work by examining how “doing gender” and “doing health” are implicated in the pursuit of emotional tranquility. The study examines the role of hair loss in women’s illness narratives of cancer using in-depth interviews with 16 white women in the US Northwest who vary in age, marital status, diagnoses, and treatments. The absence of women’s hair presents an appearance of illness that prevents them from doing femininity, which calls into question their health status because of Western beauty standards. To overcome this barrier, the women use emotion work to manage the effects of their appearance through necessarily co-occurring bodily, cognitive, and expressive strategies (Hochschild, 1979). The required emotion work during women’s hair loss makes explicit the symbolic linking of the healthy body with the feminine body through women’s head hair. Pursuing treatment for cancer is often seen as a “fight” or a “battle” against the disease and the bodily assaults of such treatments, including unwanted visible bodily changes. A substantial body of empirical work has established the complex web of social psychological problems associated with breasts and breast cancer, but less attention has been given to the side effect of hair loss that is common across cancer types and treatments.

For women in leadership, managing work and life obligations is essential, especially when leading in male dominated occupations such as STEM. This study examined social support and work-family integration/blurring to determine how women in leadership perceived these dynamics. By surveying STEM women leaders, this research explored work-life strategies and support resources used by women leaders to balance their work and non-work domains and promote their roles as leaders. Women leaders indicated difficulty delineating between work and personal roles and recognized informational and emotional support as most significant to their roles as leaders. Findings also indicated that most support came from spouses/significant others, female co-workers, and mentors outside the organization, respectively. These sources provided the support needed to maintain and progress in their roles as women leaders.

Women leaders operate within multiple roles, managing both work and nonwork obligations. Exploring work-life balance constructs, this study examined role integration, social support sources, and work-family conflict to determine their influence on women leaders. Findings suggested that women leaders felt the benefit of a variety of social support services, but especially from sources external to the organization. Women leaders were diverse in role integration strategies, with respondents largely divided between blurring and segregating their work and nonwork roles. Time-based work-family conflict was slightly more apparent than strain-based conflict. Women leaders also indicated that their work interfered with their family more than their family interfered with their work. Findings provide valuable insights as to how women view work-life balance within their roles as leaders.