Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice Research Collection

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  • Publication
    Education in a warming world: Trends, opportunities and pitfalls for institutes of higher education
    Higher education institutes (HEI) face considerable challenges in navigating how to respond to the escalating and intertwined socio-ecological sustainability crises. Many dedicated individuals working in the sector are already driving meaningful action through rigorous research, teaching, knowledge sharing, and public engagement, while there is a growing consensus that sector-wide change is needed to ensure that aspirational declarations and positive individual actions translate into sustainable and transformative change. This article seeks to contribute to such efforts by illustrating a number of trends, examples, and reflections on how third-level educational institutes can act sustainably. We highlight the potential of five strategies HEI could employ to support the creation of a more sustainable future namely, (i) innovative approaches to climate change education; (ii) research agendas for societal transformations; (iii) providing climate change education for professional development; (iv) supporting public intellectuals; and (iv) investing in whole-systems approaches to greening the campus. The insights are the product of an interdisciplinary working group with members from across Europe, Australia, and the UK. These international examples provide insight and a sense of possibility for future application.
      21Scopus© Citations 6
  • Publication
    Inequality, emissions, and human well-being
    (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023-06-08) ; ;
    Development strategies generally align with the assumption that economic growth and the use of fossil fuels, despite the resulting emissions, lead to improvements in human well-being. This logic suggests that reductions in emissions could harm human well-being. In addition to raising sustainability concerns, one component left out of such approaches is the role of inequality. This chapter highlights the importance of incorporating inequality into studies of emissions and human well-being. We review the relevant sociological literature and demonstrate how well-being, emissions, and the relationship between the two are shaped by inequality. We also summarize how the nature of these relationships vary by context and scale. We briefly outline two approaches to addressing climate change to protect the planet and promote human well-being: global climate negotiations and social movements for climate justice. We conclude by discussing directions forward for research and policy.
      36
  • Publication
    The Four Day Week: Assessing global trials of reduced work time with no reduction in pay: Evidence from Ireland
    Research suggests that worktime reduction is a multi-dividend policy that can improve human wellbeing, organisational performance, and environmental outcomes. Social benefits include reduced stress and burnout for employees and more time for family, community, and self. Economic benefits depend on the form of worktime reduction. Where it is accomplished without loss or even gains in productivity, it is beneficial for companies’ bottom lines. Environmental benefits can accrue reduced energy expended in commuting, especially with four-day work weeks; increases in low carbon but time-intensive practices for households; and reduced carbon emissions due to trading income for a time. As the most popular form of worktime reduction, a four-day, 32-hour workweek has been gaining momentum in recent years. Given this growth in interest, Four Day Week Global (4DWG) began supporting companies and non-profit organisations that wanted to try a four-day, 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay. Boston College leads the research team in partnership with University College Dublin, Cambridge University and other academic partners. We are constructing a sizeable quantitative database of employee outcomes across different countries and types of companies and organisations. We collected data on time use, subjective wellbeing, physical and mental health, labour market behaviour, and energy use with a wide-ranging instrument. In February 2022, 4DWG launched the first of several coordinated international trials. It involved 614 employees across Ireland, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The research involved (i) surveying employees at the beginning, midpoint and end of the trial, (ii) compiling time-use diaries of employees’ days off, (iii) collecting monthly data on organisational performance and (iv) interviewing employees and managers at the end of the trial1. This report presents detailed results of a subset of Irish organisations and their employees participating in the trial. This group comprised 12 small to medium enterprises, primarily concentrated in the IT and professional services sectors.
      408
  • Publication
    The Empowerment Paradox: Exploring the Implications of Neoliberalized Feminism for Sustainable Development
    (University of California Press, 2020-09-29)
    An extensive literature is dedicated to examining the proliferation of private sector-led, market-based approaches to address gender inequality. Drawing on insights from feminist environmentalism and environmental sociology, I explore how and why this phenomenon is connected to the environmental crisis. First, I analyze the World Bank’s gender strategy papers for 2001–2023. I highlight the organization's role in entrenching a neoliberal discourse of women's empowerment that erases socio-ecological contexts. Next, I provide an overview of Project Shakti, a women’s empowerment program run by Hindustan Unilever, a subsidiary of the Unilever conglomerate and a corporate partner of the World Bank. Secondary data on program outcomes show that the organization’s selective use of gendered ideologies has increased HUL's rural market share. On the other hand, the benefits for participants are less clear, particularly when considered in the context of the program’s social and environmental footprint. Finally, I present the Exxon Mobil's Foundation's gender portfolio to illustrate how exclusive networks and non-participatory program evaluations have been used by private sector actors to normalize an understanding of women's wellbeing that is devoid of environmental considerations. Together, these cases illustrate how feminist ideals have been used to support elite economic agendas with high environmental costs, while also marginalizing those who seek sustainable development through systemic reform. This phenomenon exacerbates an environmental crisis that disproportionately affects the people these programs purport to empower.
      39Scopus© Citations 2
  • Publication
    Revealing a Hidden Cost: determining the public service cost of poverty in Ireland
    (UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy, 2022-09-09)
    Living life on a poverty income is common in Irish society. Between 2010-20, on average one in seven people lived on an income below the poverty line – approximately 720,000 individuals. By necessity living life on such a low-income imposes costs on these individuals and families. Making ends meet involves personal sacrifices, restricts options and limits opportunities; and for many it is not always possible to find ways to make ends meet. These individual costs of poverty are large scale and leave effects that last years and at times generations. Alongside these individual costs, poverty is responsible for other costs. In particular, the presence of poverty in a society triggers demands on the public purse. These costs derive from the identification of poverty as a determining factor in the need for, and demand for, a wide range of public services and policies ranging across almost all areas of public policy. Building on past literature from the UK, USA, Canada and New Zealand this study attempts to establish a heretofore absent benchmark for the recurring annual costs to the state of poverty in Ireland. In doing so it adopts a different approach to the existing literature, drawing from experiences in the economic evaluation literature, to determine a range of costs rather than just one figure. These range from a conservative ‘low estimate’ to an upper-limit ‘high estimate’ with a ‘main estimate’ reflecting the most probable annual cost. The analysis is based on a review of €27.9 billion of annual public service expenditure and highlight for all members of society, whether above or below the poverty line, the recurring public expenditure costs incurred by society as a result of poverty.
      51