‘My Work Never Ends’: Women’s Experiences of Balancing Unpaid Care Work and Paid Work through WEE Programming in India

This paper seeks to lay bare the contours and consequences of the relationship between paid work and unpaid care work for women in low-income households, in order to better understand the relationship between women’s participation in paid work and ‘economic empowerment’. It is also interested in analysing whether, and if so how, women (may) achieve a positive balance between their unpaid care work and paid work responsibilities such that their economic empowerment is optimised (women’s entry into paid work is enabled without deepening their time poverty or worrying about the quality of care received by their family), shared (across generations, so that other women/girls in the family are not left to bear the burden of care), and sustained (such that the quality of care provided to children improves as a result of their mother’s paid work). The paper seeks to do this by mapping the social organisation of care in low-income households across four sites in India, and assessing how women cope with their dual burdens. By focusing our analysis on two ‘women’s economic empowerment programmes’: the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in Rajasthan and the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in Madhya Pradesh, we also seek to analyse how women’s economic empowerment policy and programming can generate a ‘double boon’: paid work that empowers women and provides more support for their unpaid care work responsibilities.International Development Research Centre (IDRC)UK Department for International DevelopmentHewlett Foundatio

The experience of falling of older people with dementia and their carers

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Falling by older people is of significant global concern as the population ages, because of subsequent injury, disability, admission to long-term care and mortality. Older people experiencing dementia are twice as likely to fall with more severe consequences. Unsurprisingly, carer-burden increases when a care-recipient falls. Older people are rarely asked about their falls experiences and those with dementia less so. The studies presented in this thesis explore the experiences of falling of older people with dementia and memory problems, and their carers. The studies were informed by contextualism and the primary study used interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the experiences of nine older people with dementia and their 10 carers, using one-to-one and joint interviews, and three focus groups with nine older people experiencing memory problems and 12 carers from a branch of the Alzheimer’s society. Analysis of the data considered the falls experience itself and the perceived consequences of falls within two higher level themes: ‘Falling as a malevolent force’ as two themes - ‘Going back to the experience’, ‘Reactions, responses and coming to terms with events’, and ‘Falling as the manifestation of dementia’ as two themes - ‘Self, identity and falling’, ‘The caring relationship’. The secondary study elaborated upon primary study data using an inductive interpretative approach unaligned to any tradition. Older people recently diagnosed with dementia and carers from another Alzheimer’s Society branch participated in two focus groups. Participants discussed stimulus cards with quotations from primary study participants. Thematic analysis suggested four major themes: Making sense of falls, The personal and social significance of falling, Falling, self and identity and Struggling to care. The findings demonstrate how falling and dementia are enmeshed and embodied experiences for participants. Spouse-carers’ discussion of their own falls emphasise the need for joint assessment and intervention to reduce carerburden and preserve couplehood

Investigating the accessibility of crowdwork tasks on Mechanical Turk

Funding Information: This work was supported by the EPSRC (grants EP/R004471/1 and EP/S027432/1). Supporting data for this publication is available at https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.62937.Crowdwork can enable invaluable opportunities for people with disabilities, not least the work fexibility and the ability to work from home, especially during the current Covid-19 pandemic. This paper investigates how engagement in crowdwork tasks is affected by individual disabilities and the resulting implications for HCI. We first surveyed 1,000 Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) workers to identify demographics of crowdworkers who identify as having various disabilities within the AMT ecosystem-including vision, hearing, cognition/mental, mobility, reading and motor impairments. Through a second focused survey and follow-up interviews, we provide insights into how respondents cope with crowdwork tasks. We found that standard task factors, such as task completion time and presentation, often do not account for the needs of users with disabilities, resulting in anxiety and a feeling of depression on occasion. We discuss how to alleviate barriers to enable effective interaction for crowdworkers with disabilities.Publisher PD

Creative producers international report

Creative Producers International was an international talent development programme which worked with 15 Creative Producers based in cities across the globe. Their areas of expertise ranged from contemporary art, place making and community engagement through to corporate collaboration, urban innovation and social activism. We have spent the last three years asking urgent questions about place, identity and public space, and exploring how arts and culture can be empowered to take a leading role in the development of our future cities. Our aim was to form and amplify a network of connected ecologies of practice that influence, challenge and support each other, and build an international bank of knowledge and experience around city change

Improving Business Performance Through The Integration Of Human Factors Engineering Into Organizations Using A Systems Engineeri

Most organizations today understand the valuable contribution employees as people (rather than simply bodies) provide to their overall performance. Although efforts are made to make the most of the human in organizations, there is still much room for improvement. Focus in the reduction of employee injuries such as cumulative trauma disorders rose in the 80 s. Attempts at increasing performance by addressing employee satisfaction through various methods have also been ongoing for several years now. Knowledge Management is one of the most recent attempts at controlling and making the best use of employees knowledge. All of these efforts and more towards that same goal of making the most of people s performance at work are encompassed within the domain of the Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics field. HFE/E provides still untapped potential for organizational performance as the human and its optimal performance are the reason for this discipline s being. Although Human Factors programs have been generated and implemented, there is still the need for a method to help organizations fully integrate this discipline into the enterprise as a whole. The purpose of this research is to develop a method to help organizations integrate HFE/E into it business processes. This research begun with a review of the ways in which the HFE/E discipline is currently used by organizations. The need and desire to integrate HFE/E into organizations was identified, and a method to accomplish this integration was conceptualized. This method consisted on the generation of two domain-specific ontologies (a Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics ontology, and a Business ontology), and mapping the two creating a concept map that can be used to integrate HFE/E into businesses. The HFE/E ontology was built by generating two concept maps that were merged and then joined with a HFE/E discipline taxonomy. A total of four concept maps, two ontologies and a taxonomy were created, all of which are contributions to the HFE/E, and the business- and management-related fields