The redefinition of gender roles in modern societies has created unprecedented opportunities for women while contributing to the decreased successful outcomes of certain male populations (i.e., “male marginalization”). In Part One, we explore women’s adjustment to changes in men’s gender roles. We investigate the implications for women, analyzing how some men’s marginalization affects female reproductive choices and decision-making. We examine how these changes burden women with responsibilities of professional success and caregiving while providing autonomy for personal fulfillment. In Part Two, we address how perceived scarcity of the men who are desirable intensifies intrasexual competition, manifesting through both direct and indirect competitive strategies that strain female friendships and social networks. Despite these challenges, women also demonstrate cooperative behaviors and alliance formation, reflecting adaptations that facilitated survival. We conclude that while women’s empowerment represents progress toward gender equality, the marginalization of some men creates situations that call for thoughtful, new solutions.

Nonprofit organizations are expected to collaborate with peers to advance social good while simultaneously competing for scarce resources such as funding, volunteers, and legitimacy. This paradox of “coopetition” has been explored structurally, but less is known about how nonprofit employees themselves communicate these tensions. Drawing on 82 hours of meeting data from a mid-sized U.S. nonprofit, this exploratory study examined moments where employees explicitly discussed both collaboration and competition. Constant comparative analysis revealed three themes that represent communicative mechanisms through which employees made the tension between collaboration and competition manageable: framing coopetition as benefiting the community, admiring and replicating others’ practices, and setting boundary conditions on collaboration and competition. These findings demonstrate how nonprofit employees in meetings reframed both collaboration and competition as community-oriented while also setting boundaries around when and how each occurs. Competitive talk became acceptable through communicative mechanisms including moral reframing, allowing employees to reconcile competition with nonprofit norms. This research offers nonprofit leaders insight into how everyday meeting talk shapes collaboration and competition, illustrating how employees can acknowledge competitive realities while preserving legitimacy and a shared sense of mission. Theoretically, this study extends paradox theory by examining how the collaboration–competition paradox is communicatively managed in organizational meetings.

Fall panicum is a major annual grass weed in drill-seeded rice production systems on organic soils in Florida. Field studies conducted in 2021 and 2022 aimed to determine the effects of season-long fall panicum interference on rough rice yield on organic soils. The relationship between fall panicum density and percent rough rice yield loss relative to the weed-free control was described using the rectangular hyperbola model. Yield loss increased with increasing fall panicum density. The initial slope parameter (I), representing percent yield loss as density approaches zero, was estimated at 9.7%, indicating that even very low fall panicum densities caused measurable yield reductions. The asymptote parameter (A), representing percent yield loss as density approaches infinity, was estimated at 118%, suggesting that yield loss approaches 100% at very high fall panicum densities within the biological limits of the crop-weed interference. Within the observed density range (1 to 49 plants m−2), yield loss was predicted to increase from approximately 9% to 95%, and 50% yield loss was estimated to occur at 9 plants m−2. Thousand-grain weight declined linearly with increasing fall panicum density, with each additional fall panicum plant per square meter reducing thousand-grain weight by 0.18 g, indicating that fall panicum interference affected grain filling. These results demonstrate that fall panicum is highly competitive with rice and that even low infestations can result in substantial yield loss, showing the importance of timely and effective management in Florida rice organic soil production systems.

The nineteenth-century British cooperative movement identified competition as the central feature of the mode of production dominating the British economy. Most often, cooperators took the competitive system to be the antithesis of their own system of mutual assistance. Yet John Stuart Mill, even while endorsing and predicting the replacement of the capitalists’ economy with a cooperative one, insists that this new mode must not desert competition. Mill holds that without competition a cooperative system will fail to achieve progress. Competition between cooperative associations is necessary to encourage investment and technological change. As an outstanding classical economist, Mill might reasonably have been expected to develop a theory of the dynamic equalization of returns across cooperative industries. But Mill fails to complete his theory of cooperative competition. He leaves numerous questions unaddressed. In particular, he does not explain what will happen to cooperatives that fall behind. Are these a source of unemployment? Will there be a business cycle? How will new products be developed? At root, Mill fails to develop a theory of entrepreneurship under cooperation.

Since the late twentieth century, institutional autonomy has become a major issue in the relationship between the government and higher education institutions, with autonomy being presented as a virtuous option that satisfied both government’s regulatory aims and institutional capacities to develop in an increasingly dynamic and complex sector. Due to concerns about the effectiveness of higher education, the development of autonomy was increasingly linked to a market-like logic, with a growing emphasis on competition and efficiency. Thus, what was initially regarded as a path to emancipation of institutions from government’s influence became a mode of relationship that could curtail previous dimensions of autonomy. One of the major regulatory dimensions that helps understand the reversals and nuances of institutional autonomy is funding. Like other regulatory dimensions, recent decades have seen the emergence of new forms of funding that have influenced institutional governance and management. In this text, we analyse these trends in European higher education by mapping changes in governments’ approaches to the sector, specifically the evolution of funding mechanisms and how these highlight a shift in the pendulum between degrees of autonomy and modes of government’s influence in institutions.

The 1891 International Gymnastics Festival, Sweden’s first international sports event and five years before the first modern Olympic Games, was hugely controversial. Many people argued that hosting the festival threatened the survival of Sweden’s own “Ling gymnastics” and even Swedish culture itself. These critics feared that hosting the competition, which would be shaped by outside influence, in turn would disadvantage Ling gymnastics and reduce confidence in a system that Swedes had believed to be the best in the world. The episode illustrates the complications arising from the emergence of international athletic competition and the underlying tension between nationalist and internationalist considerations.

Coinfections of hosts by multiple parasite species and strains are widespread in nature. Theory suggests that these infections have a key influence on the virulence, or harm caused, to hosts. However, it is still unclear whether multiple parasites, which may compete for resources and space, are indeed worse for hosts across the tree of life. To test this hypothesis, we conducted separate meta-analyses based on different expectations derived from virulence in single infections. We included 68 effect sizes from 19 experiments on non-human animal host species and 38 parasite species combinations. We found that coinfections are overall more virulent than the mean degree of harm caused by both parasites in retrospective single infections. That said, the coinfection virulence level is similar to that of the most virulent parasite, and less than the additive virulence of both single infections. These results suggest that the most virulent parasite is the primary driver of virulence in coinfection. This finding has implications for parasite spread in nature and suggests we focus on controlling the more harmful parasites in the first instance, when trying to limit the damage caused by coinfection.

Recent surveys have suggested that over half of UK households own a pet. One important aspect to this ownership is ensuring that access to appropriate veterinary care is available for their pets. To measure the ease of accessibility to such care, three aspects are important, the local demand for veterinary care, the supply of care, and the ease of travel to obtain the care. For the first element, in this study estimates were made of the household pet population for all neighbourhoods in England and Wales (36,672 neighbourhoods each containing approximately 700 households). Information regarding the location and number of veterinarians working in local practices was then used, with vehicle journey times, to provide a measure of accessibility to veterinary care. It was found that the more affluent and rural locations have better accessibility to veterinary care than deprived and urban locations. The detailed geography of the estimates provided by this study enabled the location of potential ‘veterinary deserts’ to be identified. With this knowledge additional provision can be prioritised to such locations with a view to improving the welfare of companion animals. Not only will this improve the accessibility of veterinary care but, through competition, this also has the potential to reduce care costs. Thus, the likelihood of pets receiving the care they need will improve. Whilst this study focuses upon England and Wales, the methodology presented would be equally valid in other settings where appropriate data exist.

Despite a growing literature on niche parties, little is known about whether and how these parties are responsive to policy competition. Drawing upon data on regionalist parties’ programmatic strategies across Western Europe from 1971 to 2009, I find that these niche parties are more ideologically flexible than previously posited when facing governmental policy appeasement. While they do not shift to a more extreme issue position following increases in a region's decentralization level, regionalist parties do broaden their issue agenda. Issue diversification, however, is limited to those parties whose goals are being met; dissatisfied secessionist parties do not expand their issue emphases after decentralization reforms short of independence. Supported by emerging evidence of similar agenda diversification among appeased green and radical right parties, these analyses further our understanding of niche parties as strategic actors and offer new explanations for variation in the effectiveness of mainstream party tactics towards them.

Nonprofit organizations increasingly rely on earned revenue to sustain their mission-driven activities. Previous research examining the effects of earned revenue on other income streams tends to study earned revenue in the aggregate. Using panel data from 12,372 organizations from 2010 to 2015, this analysis applies a framework of revenue embeddedness to link earned revenue activities to mission and analyze the effects of earned revenue activities on donations. Earned revenue activities offering new products or services to existing donors appear to complement individual donations. These findings have theoretical and practical applications related to how nonprofits pursue earned revenue.