Conference Proceedings of 4th International Conference on Gender Research

These proceedings represent the work of contributors to the 4th International Conference on Gender Research (ICGR 2021), hosted by University of Aveiro, Portugal on 21-22 June 2021. The Conference Co-Chairs are Professor Elisabeth T. Pereira and Professor Carlos Costa, and the Programme Chair is Professor Zélia Breda, all from University of Aveiro, Portugal. ICGR is a well-established event on the academic research calendar and now in its 4th year the key aim remains the opportunity for participants to share ideas and meet the people who hold them. The conference was due to be held at The University of Aveiro, Portugal but due to the global Covid-19 pandemic it was moved online to be held as a virtual event. The scope of papers will ensure an interesting two days. The subjects covered illustrate the wide range of topics that fall into this important and ever-growing area of research. The opening keynote presentation is given by Professor Vanessa Ratten, from La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia on the topic of Gender, Ageing and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. The second day of the conference will open with an address by Professor Erica Wilson, Southern Cross University, NSW, Australia who will talk about Gender in the time of COVID: Imagining a more Inclusive (Tourism) World. With an initial submission of 113 abstracts, after the double blind, peer review process there are 37 Academic research papers, 2 PhD research papers, 1 Masters Research paper and 8 work-in-progress papers published in these Conference Proceedings. These papers represent research from, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, North Cyprus, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, UK, UAE, USA and Vietnam

This edited volume analyzes how the COVID-19 crisis could be transformed into opportunities for those organizations that correctly interpret the change, adapt their strategies accordingly, and increase their chances of success in a post-pandemic scenario. Through this lens, the female role and contribution to recovery are analyzed and discussed in the economic, financial and social context. Even if many aspects set the COVID-19 crisis apart from the latest global financial crises – such as the unusual shutdown of businesses in specific sectors, social distancing regulations, and general uncertainty sparked by the pandemic – the challenges facing all organizations in the current recovery phase can present an opportunity for extraordinary growth and development in Europe. The focus of the contributions gathered here is not on “counting” the damages and losses but rather on monitoring the recovery and on emerging instruments to support national and global economic recovery, while paying special attention to women’s role in it.

The economic, health, and political crises, as well as the rise of the digital age, have changed and complicated the way in which people, companies, and regions function. The goal is not just survival, but also to innovate and organize themselves to chart new paths for growth and development. This book uses this premise to understand how organizations, in particular female-led businesses, work on their resilience using specific activities and relational capital as a driver of strategic value. The chapters include theoretical as well as practical contributions about how female-owned and female-run companies and organizations can take advantage of such opportunities, in terms of challenges, issues, tools, facilitators, and mechanisms that can support the use of the new opportunities in the near future.

The accruement of crises over the last two decades, with their particular manifestations in the European context, has evoked the feeling of living in exceptional times, as captured in the recurrent claim that we live in the "age of anxiety." The main aim of this collection is to analyse, from a multidisciplinary perspective, the causes and consequences of the current dominance of the discourse of fear, anxiety, and crisis through the experience of distinct and often interdependent moral panics in twenty-first-century Europe. With its multidisciplinary approach, this volume sheds light on the need to view the interrelationship between different crises and their associated affects as crucial in attaining a more nuanced understanding of the aetiology and effects of the current "age of anxiety." This multidisciplinary scrutiny of the interrelationship of twenty-first-century fears, anxiety and crises signals an original engagement with these complex phenomena in order to make their emergence and profound effects on contemporary society more comprehensible. The timeliness of the thematic focus and the rigorous in-depth analyses make this collection relevant to students and academics within the fields of sociology, literary and cultural studies, political science and anthropology, as well as to those in European studies and global studies.