"We're worth what we are paid": Unravelling the 'paradox of the contented female worker'

Pay satisfaction research has suggested that women are more satisfied with their pay than men, even though, in general, women earn less. This paper argues that this body of research has misconceptualised this phenomenon as an issue of women only. It also argues that previous explanations for this gender pay paradox have not adequately explained these patterns of satisfaction. A social constructionist approach to pay satisfaction is proposed which situates satisfaction within the context of structural inequality. This draws upon the scholarly work of feminist scholars and the conceptual ideas of Pierre Bourdieu. This theoretical approach is explored with data from qualitative interviews with support staff at universities in the United Kingdom. This evidence suggests that their pay satisfaction is influenced by beliefs about the ‘value’ of different occupations

Privaros: A Framework for Privacy-Compliant Delivery Drones

We present Privaros, a framework to enforce privacy policies on drones. Privaros is designed for commercial delivery drones, such as the ones that will likely be used by Amazon Prime Air. Such drones visit a number of host airspaces, each of which may have different privacy requirements. Privaros provides an information flow control framework to enforce the policies of these hosts on the guest delivery drones. The mechanisms in Privaros are built on top of ROS, a middleware popular in many drone platforms. This paper presents the design and implementation of these mechanisms, describes how policies are specified, and shows that Privaros's policy specification can be integrated with India's Digital Sky portal. Our evaluation shows that a drone running Privaros can robustly enforce various privacy policies specified by hosts, and that its core mechanisms only marginally increase communication latency and power consumption

Ethnic entrepreneurs and online home-based businesses: an exploratory study

This exploratory, qualitative study considers how online home-based businesses offer opportunities for ethnic entrepreneurs to ‘break out’ of traditional highly competitive and low margin sectors. Previous studies have found a positive association between ethnic minorities’ high levels of entrepreneurship and home computer use in ethnic groups. Despite these associations, previous studies have overlooked the particular opportunities offered by home-based online businesses to ethnic entrepreneurs. The study adopts mixed embeddedness as a theoretical lens to guide interviews with 22 ethnic entrepreneurs who have started online home-based businesses in the UK. We find online home-based businesses offer ethnic entrepreneurs novel opportunities to draw on their ethnic advantages and address the constraints they face. The unique affordances of this type of business allow entrepreneurs to develop the necessary IT skills by self-learning and experimentation and to sub-contract more difficult or time consuming aspects to others. The findings also show that, consistent with the theory of mixed embeddedness, whilst the entrepreneurs are influenced by social, economic and institutional forces, online businesses allow them to exert their own agency and provide opportunities to uniquely shape these forces

Experience and gender effects in acquisition experiment with value messages

In the bargaining experiment, the privately informed seller of a company sends a value message to the uninformed potential buyer who proposes a price for acquiring the company. Participants are constantly either seller or buyer and interact over 30 rounds with randomly changing partners. How are overstating the value of the company, underpricing the received value message and acceptance of price offers affected by experience and gender (constellation)? We control via treatments for awareness of gender (constellation) and show that gender (constellation) matters and that the main experience effects apply across gender (constellations)

The Pleasures and Pains of Self-Employment: A Panel Data Analysis of Satisfaction with Life, Work, and Leisure

We investigate how a transition from paid employment to self-employment in the labor market influences life satisfaction. Furthermore, we consider the dynamics of work and leisure satisfaction because the balance between work and leisure is an important element of life satisfaction. Fixed-effects regressions using German Socio-Economic Panel data (1984-2012) reveal that switching to self-employment benefits life and work satisfaction. The effects on life satisfaction are weak and temporary, but they are pronounced and relatively persistent for work satisfaction. However, the gain in work satisfaction is outweighed by a decrease in leisure satisfaction, thus placing work-life balance under severe pressure

Leveraging the macro-level environment to balance work and life: an analysis of female entrepreneurs' job satisfaction

This study investigates the interactive effect of female entrepreneurs’ experience of work–life imbalance and gender-egalitarian macro-level conditions on their job satisfaction, with the prediction that the negative linear relationship between work–life imbalance and job satisfaction may be buffered by the presence of women-friendly action resources, emancipative values, and civic entitlements. Data pertaining to 7,392 female entrepreneurs from 44 countries offer empirical support for these predictions. Female entrepreneurs who are preoccupied with their ability to fulfill both work and life responsibilities are more likely to maintain a certain level of job satisfaction, even if they experience significant work–life imbalances, to the extent that they operate in supportive macro-level environments

Gender and Small Business Success: An Inquiry into Women\u27s Relative Disadvantage

Even among a Successful Group of Small Business Owners, Women Generate Lower Sales Volumes and Derive Less Income Than their Male Counterparts. Alternative Explanations of Women\u27s Relative Disadvantage Are Evaluated Systematically. the Characteristics of the Owner and the Small Business that Differ between Genders Explain the Discrepancy in Financial Success, with the Smaller Size of Women\u27s Businesses Emerging as the Major Explanatory Factor. Women\u27s Lack of Experience and their Concentration in the Least Profitable Industries Contribute Strongly to the Gender Discrepancy as Well. the Processes through Which the Female Small Business Owner Generates Sales and Derives Income Are Quite Similar to Those of Her Male Counterpart, But Even Successful Women Are Not as Well Positioned to Exploit Business Opportunities as their Male Counterparts Because of their Structural Disadvantages Both within and Outside of the Business Arena. © 1991 the University of North Carolina Press

Ownership Patterns and Centralization: A China and U.S. Comparison

The Paper Examines the Relationships between Ownership and Decision-Making Patterns in Small Business Organizations in China and the United States. We Also Consider Organizational Size and the Culture-Free/culture-Bound Argument. the U.S. Data (A Sample of 540 Enterprises) Were Collected by Questionnaire in 1988; the Chinese Data (A Sample of 53 Enterprises) by a Converted and Translated Questionnaire based on the U.S. Version and Interviews in 1989. Findings Indicate that the Chinese Organizations with Various Forms of Ownerships Are More Centralized Than their U.S. Counterparts, Which is Consistent with the Culture-Bound Perspective. on the Other Side of the Coin, Findings Suggest that in Both China and United States, Organizational Centralization of Decision Making Decreases with Increasing Size, Although to Different Degree, Which Appears to Support the Culture-Free Argument. © 1993 Plenum Publishing Corporation