Despite the unpleasant conditions, such as lower and insufficient wages, higher working hours, longer length of service, total absence of casual workers union, indirect employment aided by the bank’s top directors, etc., casual workers are highly committed in performing their roles and achieving their organizational goals. Neoliberal theory and Equity theory were used for guidance in this study. The study employed qualitative analysis style; Total of ten banks were selected as a sample of the study involving sixty participants who were all casual workers; twenty-four female and the remaining thirty-six were male, have been selected using purposeful sampling. Content analysis was used as the method of data analysis. The study shows some of the functions performed by the casual workers of Nigerian banks include quick client service, amenability to work, client care services, opening of accounts, marketing, and timely task completion. Others include furnishing prompt client service, being prepared to work, and finishing assignments on schedule., thus, the study concludes that despite the outstanding performance of casual workers in achieving their organizational pretensions, they’re largely exploited. The recommendation of the study is that employment should be grounded on fair stipend, safety at work and protection for casual workers, in short, work should encompass fairness, equivalency, and freedom of association. Also, Payment of the benefit accumulated by the casual workers should be linked directly between casual workers and their associations.

The objective of this research is to examine the effects of income inequality, governance quality, and their interaction on environmental quality in Asian countries. Time series data are obtained from 45 Asian countries for the period 1996–2020 for this empirical analysis. The research has performed various econometric tests to ensure the robustness and reliability of the results. We have addressed different econometric issues, such as autocorrelation, heteroskedasticity, and cross-sectional dependence, using the Driscoll-Kraay (DK) standard error estimation and endogeneity issues by the system generalized method of moments (S-GMM). The results of the study revealed that income inequality and governance quality have a positive impact on environmental degradation, while the interaction of governance quality with income inequality has a negative effect on it. In addition, economic growth, population growth, urbanization, and natural resource dependency are found to deteriorate the quality of the environment. The findings of the study offer insightful policies to reduce environmental degradation in Asian countries.

Poverty, and especially the widening disparity between the rich and the poor, leads to social unrest that can interrupt the harmonious development of human society. Understanding the reasons for income inequality, and supporting the development of an effective strategy to reduce this inequality, have been major goals in socioeconomic research around the world. To identify the determinants of the income gap, we calculated the Gini coefficients for Chinese provinces and performed regression analysis and contribution analysis for heterogeneity, using data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2002 to 2018. We found that urbanization, higher education, and foreign direct investment in eastern China and energy in central and western China were important factors that increased the Gini coefficient (i.e., decreased equality). Therefore, paying more attention to the fair distribution of the factors that can increase the Gini coefficient and investing more in the factors that can reduce the Gini coefficient will be the keys to narrowing the income gap. Our approach revealed factors that should be targeted for solutions both in China and in other developing countries that are facing similar difficulties, although the details will vary among countries and contexts.

Infrastructure development policies have been criticised for lacking a deliberate pro-gender and pro-informal sector orientation. Since African economies are dual enclaves, with the traditional and informal sectors female-dominated, failure to have gendered infrastructure development planning and investment exacerbates gender inequality. The paper examines the effect of the infrastructure development index, the size of the informal economy, and the level of economic development on gender inequality. The paper applies the panel autoregressive distributed lag method to data on the gender inequality index, infrastructure development index, GDP per capita, and size of the informal sector for the period 2005–2018. The sample consists of 44 African countries. The research established that the infrastructure development index, its sub-indices, GDP per capita, and the size of the informal sector are crucial dynamics that governments need to consider carefully when formulating development policies to reduce gender inequality. The research found that investment in infrastructure in general, transport infrastructure, and energy infrastructure reduces gender inequality. infrastructure development has gender inequality increasing effects in some countries and gender inequality reducing effects in others. The pattern suggests that at the continental level a Kuznets-type patten in the relationship between gender inequality and infrastructure development, gender inequality and size of informal sector, and gender inequality and GDP per capita exists. Some countries are in the region where changes in these covariates positively correlate with gender inequality, while others are in the region where further increases in the covariates reduce gender inequality.

Historically, women have faced progressive and persistent obstacles and prejudices preventing them from fully participating in and receiving recognition for scientific research in academia. In Panama, local gender studies specifically targeting the area of academia are scarce. However, to close the gender gap, this article tries to uncover the realities of women academics who dare to research and do science in Panama, beyond statistics. A virtual survey was distributed from May to August 2023, in which 921 academics (45% men and 55% women) affiliated with public universities in Panama were surveyed. Through an empirical analysis from a gender perspective, participants’ attitudes and perceptions on the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on research, the quality of higher education in Panama, the dissemination and transmission of knowledge, and research as an adjuvant to higher education were revealed. Findings reiterate the gender bias and underrepresentation of women in Panamanian public universities and the lack of commitment to their capacity building, research, and dissemination of results. It also confirmed that, despite the covid-19 pandemic and its negative effects in all areas, the importance and recognition of scientific research were highlighted, allowing women academics to excel competitively and take advantage of new opportunities in their career development.

Our previous research on social innovation examined the process, levels, and stakeholders of social innovation, as well as its relationship with technical and technological innovation. The present study analyzes the spatial image created by the social innovation potential and investigates its relationship with the economic power of the neighborhoods. The most important conclusion of the study is that the basic territorial inequality dimensions are the same in the case of both the social innovation potential and the district’s economic strength. The difference is primarily to be found in concentration, as economic power is much more concentrated in the capital and the most important economic and tourism centers than the social innovation potential. We can therefore state that developments based on social innovation can solve a lot of the highly concentrated spatial structure in Hungary.