Track D Social Science, Human Rights and Political Science

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138414/1/jia218442.pd

Job control and demands, work-life balance and wellbeing among self-employed men and women in Europe.

Self-employed persons and their enterprises are regarded as important to the economy for their contribution to economic development. However, an understanding of the relationship between the psychosocial working conditions, the work-life balance, and outcomes such as health and wellbeing among the self-employed and micro-enterprise is limited. The main aim of this article is to study the relationships between control and demands at work, the work-life balance and wellbeing among self-employed men and women. Data were obtained from the European Social Survey Program (ESS) 2004 which is an interview survey conducted in 26 European countries (n = 15 789). Wellbeing is measured by the WHO-Five Wellbeing Index and work-life balance is measured by an index consisting of two questions asking about work-life balance/conflict. The results show that men and women who are self-employed experience a lower level of work-life balance than the employed and this result is found more in men than women. When job control and demands are held constant for the self-employed and the employed, self-employed women experience a significantly higher level of work-life balance than do employed women, yet self-employed men experience a similar level of work-life balance as do employed men. Self-employed women have a slightly higher level of wellbeing than do employed women and the difference between the self-employed and employed men is non-significant. When controlling for the level of job control the relationship between self-employment and wellbeing is non-significant among women and is significantly negative among men. In sum, the results of this study confirm that the psychosocial working conditions are important because demands and control in work influence work-life balance and well-being among self-employed men and women

Transient responses of a wetting film to mechanical and electrical perturbations

This article reports real-time observations and detailed modeling of the transient response of thin aqueous films bounded by a deformable surface to external mechanical and electrical perturbations. Such films, tens to hundreds of nanometers thick, are confined between a molecularly smooth mica plate and a deformable mercury/electrolyte interface on a protuberant drop at a sealed capillary tube. When the mercury is negatively charged, the water forms a wetting film on mica, stabilized by electrical double layer forces. Mechanical perturbations are produced by driving the mica plate toward or by retracting the mica plate from the mercury surface. Electrical perturbations are applied to change the electrical double layer interaction between the mica and the mercury by imposing a step change of the bias voltage between the mercury and the bulk electrolyte. A theoretical model has been developed that can account for these observations quantitatively. Comparison between experiments and theory indicates that a no-slip hydrodynamic boundary condition holds at the molecularly smooth mica/electrolyte surface and at the deformable mercury/electrolyte interface. An analysis of the transient response based on the model elucidates the complex interplay between disjoining pressure, hydrodynamic forces, and surface deformations. This study also provides insight into the mechanism and process of droplet coalescence and reveals a novel, counterintuitive mechanism that can lead to film instability and collapse when an attempt is made to thicken the film by pulling the bounding mercury and mica phases apart