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Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender-based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental-leave intentions in young adults (18-30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental-leave policies and societal gender equality. In all countries, women intended to take longer leave than men. National parental-leave policies and women's political representation partially explained cross-national variations in the gender gap. Gender gaps in leave intentions were paradoxically larger in countries with more gender-egalitarian parental-leave policies (i.e., longer leave available to both fathers and mothers). Interestingly, this cross-national variation in the gender gap was driven by cross-national variations in women's (rather than men's) leave intentions. Financially generous leave and gender-egalitarian policies (linked to men's higher uptake in prior research) were not associated with leave intentions in men. Rather, men's leave intentions were related to their individual gender attitudes. Leave intentions were inversely related to career ambitions. The potential for existing policies to foster gender equality in paid and unpaid work is discussed.

The workplace is becoming a site of learning for employees, intending to equip employees with the skills and knowledge demanded by the world of work. This research had the objective of examining the learning potential of Amhara National Regional State regional bureaus’ workplace environment and the self-directed learning readiness of civil servants. The researchers used a mixed research approach by collecting data from a population of (N = 6921) through questionnaires (n = 303), and interviews (n = 10). The research found that (1) public sector workplace environments (both technical and sociocultural) have above-average learning potential, except for the presence of a restrictive learning environment technically and poor social capital with the presence of suspension and mistrust among civil servants; (2) sampled civil servants in regional bureaus had average and above self-directed learning readiness. Finally, the researchers forwarded recommendations to stakeholders based on the research findings.

Teachers/facilitators in adult literacy learning programmes are recognised as being vital to successful learning outcomes. But little is known about them as a group. This small-scale research project comprising ethnographic-style case studies of five adult literacy facilitators (ALFs) in Ethiopia seeks to throw some light on these teachers, their backgrounds and what they bring to their teaching, with a view to improving the effectiveness of their work. The researchers found that all of the ALFs had high levels of commitment, but none of the ALFs received much in the way of training, and professional support for their role was in some cases missing. The degree (and their perception) of their own literacy practices varied greatly among them, even in their common use of mobile phones. It also emerged that while they had all fought very hard for their own education, one of the main reasons all of them stated for going into literacy teaching was not a general belief in the value of education but their priority need of a regular income. Another insight is that the female ALFs struggled more than their male counterparts in engaging learners; the women were criticised more excessively than the men. This research reveals something of the diversity of facilitators, and concludes that further such studies are needed in different contexts.

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