This article offers a comprehensive review of the evolution and scope of the European Union’s (EU) legal framework and policy instruments aimed at mitigating gender disparities in employment, leadership, and care. This study employs a mixed approach, drawing on primary and secondary sources, and statistical data. It analyses EU initiatives and targets aimed at advancing gender equality across six selected Member States: France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Sweden. The results indicate that the evolution of EU regulations has played a substantial role in establishing minimum standards and encouraging convergence in narrowing gender gaps. However, despite this progress, implementation remains uneven, and structural inequalities persist. This review contributes to academic and policy debates by identifying both the achievements and limitations of EU gender equality law. It also offers insights for future legislative and institutional reforms.

Within the fourth industrial revolution, generative artificial intelligence (AI) is widely heralded as the solution to stagnant productivity growth in advanced economies. Governments, corporations, and economists predict substantial economic gains from AI adoption, with estimates suggesting trillions in additional GDP. This article challenges the assumption that AI-driven productivity growth will automatically benefit workers. We argue that the concept of productivity obscures a prior distributional question: who captures the gains from increased output? To address it, we distinguish between zero-sum productivity, whose gains accrue to capital owners, and positive-sum productivity, in which the gains are broadly shared. Drawing on recent evidence, we identify three factors that undermine the prospects for positive-sum outcomes: corporations’ tendency not to share productivity gains with workers, AI’s threat to knowledge workers previously protected by specialised expertise, and the uncertain and uneven effects of AI across organisations. The decoupling of wages from productivity since the 1970s, alongside the growth of rent-seeking, suggests that AI may intensify existing inequalities rather than resolve them. Whether the gains are shared is not settled by the technology but depends on institutions and policy. We advocate a human-centric approach that requires active state intervention through industrial policies that incentivise job creation, meaningful work design, and the equitable distribution of productivity rewards.

While loneliness and social isolation are risk factors for poor health and functioning, prominent theories suggest that loneliness may serve an adaptive function by encouraging social reconnection. Nevertheless, few studies have examined how loneliness and isolation relate to each other, and other outcomes, over time. Using the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, a UK population-representative cohort of 2,232 individuals born in 1994–1995 (49% male, 90% White), we investigated how loneliness and isolation are related across time and jointly influence outcomes. Loneliness and isolation were assessed at ages 12 and 18. Mental health, well-being, health behaviors, and socioeconomic outcomes were measured at age 18. Loneliness and isolation were concurrently and longitudinally associated with each other across adolescence. Loneliness marginally moderated the stability of social isolation from age-12 to 18 (β = ‒0.08, p = 0.08) but did not observe a buffering effect, with isolated children who experienced loneliness experiencing high isolation in young adulthood. Age-12 loneliness and isolation were independently associated with poorer mental health, well-being, and socioeconomic outcomes (β = ‒0.18–0.10, p < 0.05), though experiencing both was not associated with worse outcomes. Our findings underline the pervasive impacts of childhood loneliness and isolation and challenge the view that loneliness drives social reconnection in early life.

We tested whether the degree to which university instruction is professionally oriented has an indirect effect on university graduates’ early career outcomes (finding a job within 6 months after graduation and three job quality indicators: educational horizontal fit, perceived overqualification, and hierarchical level) via personal employability dimensions (career identity, personal adaptability, human capital, and social capital). The study sample consisted of 303 university graduates. Data were collected at two time points: 2 months before graduation (Time 1) and 6 months after graduation (Time 2). Two research models were tested by means of path analyses, for the two sets of dependent variables: finding a job after graduation and job quality of those that found a job. The results showed that: (1) professionally oriented university instruction (POUI) had a positive indirect effect on finding a job within 6 months after graduation via social capital; (2) POUI had a positive indirect effect on horizontal fit and a negative indirect effect on perceived overqualification via career identity; and (3) POUI had a positive indirect effect on the hierarchical level via social capital.

Hermann Cohen’s “neo-Kantian” critique of capitalism is primarily ethical. It is anchored in the principle that social relations must include people as ends in themselves, never merely as means. But Cohen draws on law to exemplify such inclusion: artificial legal persons such as cooperatives incorporate members as free and equal. I criticise Cohen for downplaying the constraints involved and, further, for only gesturing toward the role of law in capitalism. Kantian principles, if not Kant’s own views, can help address these flaws. I suggest that the form of capitalism rests on money, employment, and another sort of legal person, the business corporation.

The Covid-19 pandemic has negatively affected labour markets, among other aspects of life. This study examines the impact of the discouraged worker effect during the pandemic, focusing on the Turkish labour market from 2018 to 2021. Although few studies exist on this topic, they rely on labour force participation rates, whereas our dataset includes direct questions and data specifically related to the discouraged worker effect, allowing for a microeconomic analysis. Probit regression results show that the discouraged worker effect was stronger during the pandemic, with job seekers being 1.6% more likely to become discouraged than before. Higher education levels generally reduce this likelihood, both before and during the pandemic. While age negatively correlates with discouragement, this effect diminishes with increasing age. Single women were more adversely affected than single men and married women than married men. Higher unemployment rates increase discouragement, as expected, while an increase in the unemployment rate has a greater effect on individuals during the pandemic period. Findings suggest that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on certain individuals, particularly with respect to education level and gender, while Türkiye’s societal structure may help explain the observed gender-based differences.

This article explores how young people in Norilsk – Russia’s largest Arctic city and a global exemplar of industrial monotown development – negotiate their futures amid extreme environmental challenges, social isolation, and economic uncertainty. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews with vocational students of industrial specialisations, the paper examines the ways in which youth navigate a unique “here” (Norilsk) versus “on the mainland” (the rest of Russia) divide that shapes both lived experience and imagined mobility. The analysis reveals that youth typically approach life in Norilsk as a temporary, but agentic strategy: they seek financial security and work experience locally before considering uncertain migration elsewhere. This calculated “staying,” termed “permanent temporality,” is influenced by limited educational and career opportunities, strong vocational pipelines, and family narratives that valorise the accumulation of a “safety cushion” prior to moving. While Norilsk offers predictability and stability, it is rarely seen as a place for long-term residence or generational settlement. The findings challenge assumptions of Arctic youth passivity or inevitable depopulation, highlighting instead the adaptive agency young people display in a context of structural constraint. The study situates these strategies between broader transformations in Russian education, shifting value attached to vocational and university pathways, and the specific vulnerabilities of Arctic urban environments. The article concludes by discussing the implications for regional policy, urban sustainability, and broader understandings of youth transition and mobility under conditions of global peripherality and rapid socioeconomic change.

This study explores the gender wage gap in Türkiye between 2013 and 2022 using a novel 10-year panel dataset constructed with administrative data compiled for the first time in Türkiye, which includes approximately 14 million full-year workers in 360 subgroups by demographic, sectoral, and occupational factors. The analysis examines the long-term effects of demographic factors, such as age, education, and marital status, as well as the work-related factors, including occupation and employment sector, on the gender wage gap. The findings reveal that men working full-time in formal employment earn 10.1% more than women in Türkiye, and the study shows evidence of how the gender wage gap varies across different demographic groups. The results obtained emphasise the significant roles of marital status, occupation, age, and sector in explaining the wage differential, while education is shown not have a meaningful long-term impact on the wage gap. Moreover, contrary to expectations, the study confirms that occupational experience, the aging labour force, and increased female labour force participation contribute to the widening of the gender wage gap. These findings underline the need for targeted economic and social policies to address gender-based wage differences in a country where the labour force participation of women has traditionally been outstandingly low. This study aims to contribute to the literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of a large-scale dataset that offers new insights into gender wage differences.