Contextual Constraints Research Articles

Fostering employee well-being and workplace recovery in the hospitality industry: The role of supportive break times at work

The study investigates the mechanism of hospitality employees' recovery during break times at work. It adopted semi-structured in-depth interviews targeting twenty-nine hotel employees in Japan. The results provide nine recovery activities falling into four categories: cognitive, relaxation, nutrition intake, and social activities. Eight recovery experiences are also found, including two new types not identified in the previous studies: reconnection and refreshment. Built on the effort-recovery model and conservation of resource theory, it reveals a two-phase structure of recovery experiences, with three groups of primary experiences leading to specific secondary experiences, which suggests that employees undertake multiple recovery experiences until they reach a state of recovery. It also supports the significance of contextual constraints in employees’ recovery process at work. The study enhances our understanding of recovery theories within the context of work breaks in the hospitality industry. It assists managers in creating more effective organisational interventions to support employee recovery during breaks.

Co-Production Within Academic Constraints: Insights from a Case Study.

Co-production in research offers the potential for multiple benefits, including amplifying the voices of the marginalised, reducing power inequalities between academic researchers and co-researchers outside of academia, increased likelihood of impact, and improvement in the research process. But alongside increased interest in co-production, there is increased awareness of its contextual constraints. Key amongst these are institutional orthodoxies in academia, including time-limited, project-based research and precarious employment for junior researchers. To examine how the potential benefits of co-production can be achieved within the constraints of current academic systems, a case study project was assessed against a documented set of expectations for the co-production of research with older adults. The case study was a research project conducted with seven almshouse communities in England on the topic of social resilience. The wider almshouse communities-staff, trustees, and residents-were involved in co-production. The assessment concluded that co-production led to rich data and deep understanding. Co-production aided the development of skills and experiences of the co-researchers, resulted in changes in practice, and challenged power differentials, albeit in limited ways, but could not ensure the sustainability of relationships or impact. Key elements for effective co-production included the approach to and governance of the project, the formation of a Residents Advisory Group, and planning for the limited commitment that individuals and organisations outside of academia may be able to contribute to research.

Identity Work: A Qualitative Study of Residents' Experiences Navigating Identity Struggles.

Medical training traditionally holds a deterministic view of professional socialization wherein many medical learners struggle to construct a professional identity. Previous research has demonstrated the dysfunctional norms and conflicting ideologies that create identity struggle, disproportionally affecting women and individuals underrepresented in medicine. Symbolic interactionism can help explain identity struggles, emphasizing the influence of socio-contextual factors on identity construction. The purpose of this study was to explore how residents navigate identity struggles during residency training. We conducted a qualitative exploration of 12 residents in three specialties at three academic institutions in the United States. Participants engaged in rich picture drawings followed by one-on-one interviews. We coded transcript data and met regularly to identify themes related to residents' experiences with navigating professional identity struggles. We identified three main themes on navigating identity struggles: the weight of identity work, the isolating nature of identity work, and the navigation that occurs with and against socio-contextual currents. Residents described identity work as navigation like a boat at sea. This work felt weighty and at times overwhelming and residents often felt unable to discuss their identity struggles with others. Residents utilized what agency they had to either navigate with the current, navigating towards acceptable-albeit imperfect-paths forward, or attempting to go against the current to forge new paths through resistance. This study highlights how context enables and constrains identity construction, how contextual constraints can create dissonance between identities, and the considerable effort required to reconcile dissonance and construct professional identities. Training program adjustments, enhanced resident support, and cultural shifts are required to sustain residents' identity work. Medical professionals should engage in collective identity work to reimagine the profession's identity by addressing dysfunctional cultural norms.

Innovations and Quality Seed Potato Multiplication in the Central Kenya Highlands

Aim: Potato is an important food crop in Kenya. Land for seed potato multiplication was allocated at Tigoni, but the volume produced declined due to land grabbing. To overcome this constraint partnerships were forged among various actors. The objective of the study was to unravel the link between partnerships and the history of land tenure in Kenya. Methods: Data was collected through qualitative methods. These included 25 key informant interviews, 9 focus group interviews and observations. This was complemented with secondary sources that included journal articles, books and reports. The qualitative data was transcribed, coded and analysed through ATLAS.ti 23 computer software. Results: The study found that collaborations with smallholder farmer groups did not provide quality seed potato due to inadequate land for crop rotation resulting in disease infestations. The study concluded that R&D partnerships did not deliver a reliable volume of quality seed as predicted, because they failed to address contextual constraints related to historical land shortages. Recommendation: The study recommended a government policy that ensures that all the grabbed land meant for research and seed multiplication was reverted to KALRO Tigoni to guarantee adequate potato seed multiplication.

Politico-Administrative Culture and Public Service Reform in Post-Independence Kazakhstan

Classical organizational management literature draws clear parallels between organizational culture and climate and effective use of power and influence as key to successful policy implementation of reforms in public sector organizations. On the other hand, the public policy literature, in particular, policy transfer as a strand within policy studies, emphasizes the role of the national context, more specifically, ‘facilitators’ and ‘constraints’ of ‘‘politico-administrative culture” within the national context, as crucial to understanding processes of transfer, convergence, and diffusion of public policy. There is a plethora of studies by Western scholars of public management who have successfully utilized these theoretical underpinnings to study the effectiveness of public service reforms in mature policy environments such as the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, and others. However, the public policy and comparative public management literature only offers a limited number of case studies from developing, middle-/upper-middle countries, which rely on concepts of organizational management in addition to narratives on the impact of policy learning from global doctrines, such as Weberianism, New Public Management (NPM), and New Public Governance (NPG), and national politics, on the implementation of administrative reforms in those contexts. Kazakhstan, as a resource-affluent post-Soviet country and a bastion of modernization and ‘open government’ in Central Asia or the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the post-Soviet era is a case in point. Based on ethnographic research consisting of interviews with elite academics, civil servants, and think-tank activists, as well as reviews of OECD and government strategy reports in Astana, the findings point to a potential abatement of the impact of context constraints such as large power distance and collectivist behavior by context facilitators such as those surrounding the use of ‘trilingualism’ and public diplomacy towards reforms in Kazakhstan particularly in recent years.

"Kuteteza": A community-engaged COVID-19 Prevention and Protection Initiative in Southern Malawi.

The COVID-19 epidemic in Malawi involved almost 90,000 recorded cases and 2,638 deaths. In response to early concerns about vulnerable older people in rural areas, we developed 'Kuteteza': a COVID-19 mitigation response project. Clinicians, public health professionals, and researchers collaborated with government and district-level staff in two Southern Malawi districts. Interventions included supported 'shielding' of older people - minimising social mixing whilst having their daily needs supported. Additional mitigation strategies included provision of masks, handwashing stations, and soap. Government partnerships allowed additional support for vulnerable groups. We present the findings of a realist project evaluation, assessing the feasibility of this approach. We collated anonymised descriptive data on Kuteteza procedures and conducted qualitative structured observations in villages involved in the initiative. We carried out three focus groups involving community members, frontline health staff, and volunteers in each setting. These provided deeper insights into experiences of the pandemic and impacts of the intervention, including suggested opportunities during future outbreaks. The project involved 25 villages across two districts, with 1,087 people over the age of 60 voluntarily participating in 'shielding'. Supplies of food, water, and cooking fuel were mostly arranged within the family. In Kuteteza villages, the handwashing stations and soap were widely used, and there was awareness and some observance of COVID-19 prevention measures. The project, including the provision of supplies, was greatly appreciated by communities, but wider contextual constraints - namely widespread economic insecurity - presented persisting challenges. Suggestions for improvement largely concerned project enhancements and extensions. Through effective stakeholder engagement and contribution to national response strategy, the Kuteteza project helped raise COVID-19 awareness and supported populations at a critical time in the pandemic. Kuteteza approaches were welcomed locally and may be incorporated in future epidemic responses. Supported 'shielding' should be paired with government-led measures to mitigate economic hardship.

“If you don't go to site, they call you a lazy person”: Drivers of women's participation in artisanal and small-scale mining: The case of rural northern Ghana

In recent years, women's involvement in informal artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) activities in sub-Saharan African countries have surged. While many studies have attributed the increased involvement of women in ASM to the rising economic hardship in rural landscapes, a deeper interrogation of the socioeconomic and sociocultural drivers of the surge in women in ASM remains underexplored. This study inquires as follows: has women's increased participation in ASM anything to do with socioeconomic factors, or sociocultural factors, or to both? The study draws on a qualitive case study research design involving in-depth interviews with 67 women miners in northern Ghana, one of the emerging ASM hotspots. It answers the question by analyzing (1) the socioeconomic drivers of women's participation in ASM, and (2) the sociocultural drivers of women's participation in ASM. This helps in identifying the contextual constraints to women's participation in ASM in Ghana and other regions in sub-Saharan Africa. Findings show that the socioeconomic drivers of women's participation in ASM are unemployment, increasing household needs, climate change effect on agriculture, and the quest to acquire physical assets. A key contribution of the study relates to how the local communities' sub-culture, social recognition for women who made it in ASM and marital challenges drive women's participation in ASM. Participation in ASM inures to women's empowerment in the long-run provided the sociocultural, financial, and technological barriers facing women miners are addressed. The findings underscore the urgent need for a robust policy on gender mainstreaming and the creation of a gender-sensitive mining environment alongside formalization of ASM activities in developing countries.

The Challenges of “Renewed” Enlargement to the Western Balkan Countries

In the last two decades, acting as an anchor for a transition to democracy and a market economy, the EU has given membership perspectives to the Western Balkan countries of Albania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Croatia. At the outset, the EU triggered democratic reforms, empowered civil society organisations, and established democratic rules in those countries. However, on Croatia’s joining the EU in 2013, the Union demonstrated what can be best described as apparent enlargement fatigue and took a break from the widening of Western Balkan countries for the five subsequent years. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 revitalised the EU enlargement policy towards Western Balkan countries for security and geostrategic considerations. In that purview, this paper seeks to explore contextual constraints associated with the EU’s renewed enlargement policy towards Western Balkan countries. Using the conceptual framework of Alcaro and his co-authors (2022), it is argued that the EU renewed enlargement operates in a context driven by the following three key processes: (1) multi-actor geostrategic competition; (2) regional fragmentation; and (3) intra-EU contestation. In this context, considering international, regional, and institutional contextual constraints, the EU’s leverage on the Western Balkan countries would not be taken for granted, suggesting that the EU needs to develop hybrid strategies transcending classic tools of enlargement.

Generation mechanism of behavioral risk for organizational decision-makers in financial institutions: organizational and human errors

This study investigates the mechanism behind the generation of behavioral risk among decision-makers in financial institutions. We start by examining the general mechanism of organizational decision-making behavior, then analyse organizational errors and human errors in the decision-making process, and subsequently define the connotations and types of organizational decision-makers’ behavioral risk. The study also identifies the necessary conditions for the emergence of decision-making behavioral risk. We construct a model to analyse the behavioral risk of decision-makers in financial institutions. We also develop motivation and utility functions for organizational decision-makers’ behavior, examine the relationship between factors in the utility function, and explore how organizational decision-makers adjust their behavior in various situations to maximize utility. The paper also analyses a case study involving the China Everbright Group (CEG). The study revealed the following: ① The conditions for the occurrence of organizational decision-makers’ behavioral risk in financial institutions mainly stem from the conflict between organizational interests and decision-makers’ interests, the failure of organizational contextual constraints, and the lack of organizational decision-making auditing and feedback mechanisms. ② Organizational decision-makers tend to exhibit inappropriate decision-making behaviors when they overestimate their own abilities in comparison to the benefits they expect. ③ Financial institutions should avoid organizational errors to reduce the likelihood of behavioral risk by increasing the cost of organizational decision-makers’ behavior. Our study proposes measures to mitigate the risk of inappropriate behavior by financial institutions through scientific decision-making.

Review on Potential Urban Development Site Selection Using Geospatial-Based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) Techniques in the Context of Ethiopia

This review paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the opportunities and challenges in leveraging geospatial-based technologies, particularly Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) techniques, to enhance the effectiveness of urban development site selection in Ethiopia. The overarching findings highlight several critical focus areas for improvement. Firstly, the review emphasizes the need to strengthen the availability, quality, and accessibility of geospatial data through the development of robust data infrastructures and innovative data collection methods. Secondly, it recommends adopting a more inclusive and collaborative approach to stakeholder engagement, coupled with targeted capacity-building initiatives to enhance the technical skills and knowledge of urban planners, GIS experts, and local stakeholders. Thirdly, the paper suggests incorporating advanced spatial modeling and simulation techniques to capture the dynamic nature of urban growth patterns, as well as integrating climate change impact assessments and disaster risk analyses into the decision-making framework. Fourthly, it emphasizes the importance of strengthening institutional and organizational frameworks to promote cross-sectoral collaboration, data sharing, and integrated decision-making processes. Finally, the review underscores the significance of designing user-friendly and customizable Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) that cater to the specific needs and constraints of the Ethiopian urban development context. The review concludes that the use of geospatial-based MCDA approaches holds immense potential in addressing Ethiopia's complex urban development challenges, as it enables a comprehensive evaluation of suitability factors and the exploration of alternative urban development strategies.

Vessel-promoted OCT to OCTA image translation by heuristic contextual constraints

Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) is a crucial tool in the clinical screening of retinal diseases, allowing for accurate 3D imaging of blood vessels through non-invasive scanning. However, the hardware-based approach for acquiring OCTA images presents challenges due to the need for specialized sensors and expensive devices. In this paper, we introduce a novel method called TransPro, which can translate the readily available 3D Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) images into 3D OCTA images without requiring any additional hardware modifications. Our TransPro method is primarily driven by two novel ideas that have been overlooked by prior work. The first idea is derived from a critical observation that the OCTA projection map is generated by averaging pixel values from its corresponding B-scans along the Z-axis. Hence, we introduce a hybrid architecture incorporating a 3D adversarial generative network and a novel Heuristic Contextual Guidance (HCG) module, which effectively maintains the consistency of the generated OCTA images between 3D volumes and projection maps. The second idea is to improve the vessel quality in the translated OCTA projection maps. As a result, we propose a novel Vessel Promoted Guidance (VPG) module to enhance the attention of network on retinal vessels. Experimental results on two datasets demonstrate that our TransPro outperforms state-of-the-art approaches, with relative improvements around 11.4% in MAE, 2.7% in PSNR, 2% in SSIM, 40% in VDE, and 9.1% in VDC compared to the baseline method. The code is available at: https://github.com/ustlsh/TransPro.

Opportunities and limits: exploring young people’s views of staff care in residential alcohol and other drug services

ABSTRACT Young people in residential alcohol and other drug (AOD) services build meaningful relationships with workers during their stays. In this paper we use an ethics of care framework to explore what young people said about care, how it was delivered and what they valued about it. Drawing on three waves of longitudinal interviews conducted with 38 young people over 12 months, we discuss our findings according to two overarching themes – opportunities enabled by care and limits to care. Young people’s descriptions highlight the potential for care to challenge stigma, enhance self-worth and wellbeing, enable respectful staff-client relationships, and foster positive relationships crucial for maintaining engagement. At the same time, young people described challenges around providing both individual and collective care, coproducing care in structured environments, and facilitating care as young people transition out of residential services. These findings shed light on the delicate balance between care provision and contextual constraints within AOD settings. This emphasises the need for ethical relationships built on clear communication, mutual respect, and ongoing forms of care. Recognising the value of care work, especially in transitions out of acute treatment services, is essential for reshaping funding approaches to prioritise meaningful and continuing care.

‘I don’t want to be seen as period prone’: An exploration of psychological strategies used across the menstrual cycle

Despite increased attention on the menstrual cycle in sport, research has focused largely on physiological changes, with relatively little consideration for fluctuations in psychological responses and coping strategies used in training and competition. This study's primary focus was to explore athlete's coping strategies throughout the menstrual cycle. Participants ( n = 12) took part in a focus group or interview, facilitated by reflections from a diary and mapping exercise. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data, generating three themes: Impact of symptoms, coping strategies, and contextual constraints. Participants had increased awareness of physiological over psychological fluctuations, and associated symptoms were considered to impact practicalities of sport and performance. Participants used avoidance, acceptance, and planning to cope with the impact of menstrual symptoms. Coping options were influenced by contextual constraints, including the level of competition and type of sport. The findings showed that some participants lacked menstrual health literacy, especially in relation to psychological fluctuations. Continued efforts to raise awareness around the psychological symptoms of the menstrual cycle and its impact on performance and well-being are needed, not only for the athlete but importantly for the coaching population too. Specifically, consideration of the sporting culture and the space in which athletes feel they can communicate their coping strategies could be pivotal in moving forwards to help develop ‘period pro’ athletes.

‘Managing values’ in health economics modelling: Philosophical and practical considerations

Stakeholder involvement has been proposed as a key strategy for appropriately managing value-laden decisions or ‘value judgments’ in health economics modelling. Philosophers of science, however, conceive of stakeholder involvement in research in conflicting ways, and also propose alternative strategies for ‘managing values’ in science. Furthermore, all proposed strategies for managing values in science raise philosophical questions and practical challenges that are difficult to resolve. As a result, health economists who seek to appropriately inform value judgments in modelling must currently go without straightforward guidance. There is a need to further explore how health economists should manage value judgments in modelling, taking into account philosophical debates and contextual constraints. This paper discusses core proposals for managing values in science and identifies philosophical questions and practical challenges these proposals leave unresolved. It further considers how this could potentially inform processes to manage value judgments in health economics modelling, using examples from an ongoing modelling project called LEAP (Lifetime Exposures and Asthma Outcomes Projection). We conclude that all strategies to ‘manage values’ in health economics modelling have strengths and weaknesses, but are generally compatible with one another, suggesting that health economists may use a combination of strategies. Further research is needed to explore the effects of strategies to ‘manage values’ in health economics modelling.

Does negative political coverage affect the completion of cross-border mergers and acquisitions—Evidence from BRICS in the US market

High-quality implementation of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (cross-border M&As) is an important pathway for emerging-market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) to enhance their international competitiveness. However, in comparison to developed countries, cross-border M&As by EMNEs are often prohibited by the liability of origin caused by negative political coverage. How and why negative political coverage affect the completion of cross-border M&As by EMNEs? What are the contextual constraints that moderate the impact of negative political coverage on cross-border M&As completion? Based on the “liability of origin” theory, this paper addresses these questions using data from the Zephyr database on cross-border M&As by EMNEs in the United States from 2016 to June 2021 and employing a logit model for estimation. The research findings are as follows: (1) Negative political coverage leads to negative perceptions of emerging market countries by host country stakeholders, creating the liability of origin and stigmatizing the corporate nationality, thereby reducing the success rate of cross-border M&As by EMNEs. (2) Increasing geographical distance leads to information asymmetry, reinforcing the negative impact of negative political coverage on the completion of cross-border M&As by EMNEs. (3) Relevant mergers and acquisitions exacerbate the negative effect of negative political coverage on the success rate of cross-border M&As by EMNEs. (4) Being a publicly traded firm and having successful experience in cross-border M&As both intensify the negative impact of negative political coverage on the success rate of cross-border M&As by EMNEs.

Examination of a case of "treatment failure" in long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy for treatment-resistant depression.

Randomized controlled trials have reported psychoanalytic psychotherapy to improve longer-term post-treatment outcomes in patients with treatment-resistant depression. In this case study, we examine the therapy process of a female trial participant diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression. Structured clinical assessments indicated that the patient's level of depression remained unchanged during and after treatment. Over the course of the therapy, she repeatedly broke away from important others and finally also from the therapy itself, which we linked to the impact of earlier experiences of abandonment on her internal world. In the discussion, we present a variety of reflections that were put forward by the authors during a series of case discussion meetings. Some of these reflections relate to how the inner world of this patient might have triggered a negative therapeutic reaction and a destructive pattern of repetition. The interpretative stance, in which the therapist interpreted this reaction as indicative of a psychic conflict and linked this conflict to the therapeutic relationship, seemed to be experienced by the patient as unhelpful and persecutory. Other elements that were brought up include basic distrust, lack of symbolization and trauma in the patient, as well as the constraints of the research context.

Time is running out: How design thinking shapes team innovation under time constraints

Design thinking as a problem-solving framework has garnered significant attention for its reliance on abductive reasoning and human-centeredness. Existing literature has underscored the importance of these elements in fostering an array of organizational outcomes and enhancing the overall stakeholder satisfaction. However, less is known about how these reasoning approaches influence team innovation quality, particularly in time-constrained settings. The present study aims to fill this gap by focusing on team dynamics and examining the effects of abductive reasoning and human-centeredness on team innovation quality. We conduct an empirical analysis involving seven teams, each undertaking multiple innovation decisions under time constraints in a laboratory game context. Our results suggest an interplay between the reasoning approaches and team innovation quality. Specifically, teams that relied more on abductive reasoning in time-constrained tasks tended to make lower-quality decisions, while teams that were highly human-centered produced decisions of higher quality. Importantly, team size emerged as a key moderating variable. Larger teams were found to exert an even more negative impact of abductive reasoning on team innovation quality while amplifying the positive effects of human-centeredness.

Preconditions and projection: Explaining non-anaphoric presupposition

In this paper we articulate a pragmatic account of the projection behavior of three classes of non-anaphoric projective contents: the pre-states of change of state (CoS) predicates, the veridical entailments of factives, and the implication of satisfaction of selectional restrictions. Given evidence that the triggers of these implications are not anaphoric, hence do not impose presuppositional constraints on their local contexts, we argue that the projection behavior of these implications cannot be explained by the standard Karttunen/Heim/van der Sandt proposals. But we recognize that parallels between the projection behavior of these implications and the projection behavior of anaphorically-triggered implications must be explained. The current account offers a unified explanation of why the predicates in question give rise to projection at all; why projection of these implications is susceptible to contextual suppression; and why projection is systematically filtered in the standard Karttunen filtering environments, despite the absence of contextual constraints. We demonstrate that our account largely makes the same predictions for filtering of anaphoric and non-anaphoric presuppositions, and briefly support the claim that in the case of disjunction, filtering in the two cases is not fully parallel, as predicted by our account. We also briefly discuss how the well-documented variability in projection across predicates in the same semantic class can be understood within our approach.

Topological Interlocking Assembly: Introduction to Computational Architecture

Topological interlocking assembly (TIA) and computational architecture treat form as an emergent property of a material system, where the final shape results from the interplay of geometries and geometric interdependencies influenced by contextual constraints (material, structure, and fabrication). This paper posits that TIA is an ideal pedagogical tool for introducing students to computational architecture, and its theoretical foundations and design principles. Specifically, defining TIA as a material system provides a robust educational approach for engaging students with computation; fostering design processes through bottom-up, hands-on investigations; expressing design intents as procedural logic; understanding generative geometric rules; and exploring the flexibility of parametric variations. The methodology is detailed and illustrated through a design workshop and study unit from the Bachelor’s and Master’s programs at the Faculty for the Built Environment, University of Malta. Four case studies of TIA—of tetrahedra, cones, octahedra, and osteomorphic blocks—demonstrate how these exercises introduce students to computational thinking, parametric design, and fabrication techniques. This paper discusses the advantages and limitations of this pedagogical methodology, concluding that integrating computational architecture in education shifts students’ design processes to investigation and innovation-based approaches, enabling them to address contemporary design challenges through context-driven solutions.

Changes in ageing women’s sexual subjectivity as seen from a life course perspective: security, caring, and desire

This article explores the sexual subjectivity of women of post-reproductive age who seek partners on dating apps. The existing literature highlights the sexual subjectivity and agency of older women as contested and not sufficiently investigated. Even less research has been conducted on changes in the sexual subjectivity of women born in the USSR in the 1960s, with the liberalisation of sexual behaviour. The study is based on 45 interviews with women aged 55 years and over, who were born in the USSR and who now live in Israel, Finland and Russia. In the article, we examine sexual subjectivity as presented in the interviews from a life course perspective. We explain theoretically and empirically how changes in sexual subjectivity are expressed in the light of age and socio-cultural context constraints. Three life stories highlight the accumulation of experience and turning points, such as divorce and migration. They illustrate very different pathways in changing sexual subjectivity, yet all contain three Leitmotifs: desire, security and caring. The expression of post-reproductive female desire can be related to the need to feel secure and enjoy mutual care in sexual relationships. We show that these Leitmotifs shape and are shaped by women’s identifications as both sexual objects and subjects, and explore how they relate to different sexual cultures and variations in the socio-sexual positioning of women in Israel, Finland, and Russia.