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Previous accounts of exclusion, primarily those proposed in the context of access to welfare, marginalize the role of negotiation and its potential for highlighting distinct barriers and possibilities within specific institutional configurations. Furthermore, when negotiation is examined in the context of access to social services, it is rarely considered as reflecting changes in exclusion or the need to distinguish among exclusionary outcomes in mothers' lives. The author proposes a conceptualization of the distinction between civic exclusion and isolated exclusion, introducing the latter as a specific condition in which mothers are forced to respond to their children's needs by resorting to privatized entitlement.

Structured interviews were conducted between 2016 and 2017 with 90 mothers “providing in poverty” from seven marginalized categories in Israel. The interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory perspective.

Three negotiation positions are revealed: positive citizenship, privatized entitlement and inconsistent gains. These positions reflect specific conditions of civic exclusion, which manifests in the form of multiple disadvantage in the lives of mothers, regardless of available forms of welfare support; and isolated exclusion, which manifests as the inability to protect one's children from harsh material scarcity, regardless of attempts to establish eligibility.

Longitudinal data could better reflect the ramifications of isolated exclusion, particularly when translated into privatized entitlement.

The consequences of isolated exclusion should be studied, in order to prevent negotiation failure leading to this phenomenon.

Up until recently, the notion of exclusion was used without relevant distinctions obscuring the meaning of failing to negotiate access to welfare, in mothers' lives. Conceptualizing negative outcomes of negotiation as leading to isolated exclusion and privatized entitlement clarifies the meaning of poverty as dependency. Further, without relevant distinctions, scholars' and activists' effort to introduce higher commitment to mothers' negotiation among street-level bureaucrats cannot be accounted for.

Welfare reforms introduced conditionality into cash transfers often by diverse welfare-to-work programs achieving its vast legitimization. Meanwhile in-kind poverty alleviation policies maintained their universal character in the forms of national budgeting of municipal services. Utilizing justification work, the authors aim at showing how conditionality of in-kind support is replacing universalism. The authors ask which justification work assist administrators in shaping the relationship between in-kind and cash transfer and the changing meanings of poverty alleviation practices.

The authors conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with senior administrators in Israeli local governments analysing them along principles of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2010). Further, seeking to elicit the justification work, the authors added some guidelines from the discourse interaction approach.

The findings identified administrators' justification work as taking two major shapes. The first is an emphasis on conditionality in their in-kind support projects, which is limited in time, contingent upon co-operation and sometimes even enhancing choice for those in need. The second is the manifestation of pride anchored in the skilful budget management enabling the achievement of conditional in-kind support projects based on the effort involved.

The authors did not prompt the interviewees for the proportions of specific categories, such as whether they are attending and benefitting of the in-kind support programs. This is a limitation of this study that prevented the authors from contrasting perceived achievements against the actual coverage of their projects.

It is important that government funding is increased for municipal anti-poverty policies engaging municipal administrator in the struggle for full and better coverage so that capability deprivation is combatted by a combination of cash transfer and quality social services that are universal and at the same time secure mentoring and supervision to all households in need.

Future research should present the analysis that associates different budgets of each city with its anti-poverty polices and its different socio-economic ranking. Critical social-policy scholars may apply this study’s findings in future analyses of municipal administrators' power position as reinforced by national level policy makers, particularly when introducing controversial policies.

Anti-poverty policy and the specific combination between conditional cash transfers and in-kind support have been explained at the level of political–economic decision making. The authors conceptualize the need to explain anti-poverty policy by focussing on municipal administrators’ embedded agency, particularly around controversial issues. By building the professional self of municipal welfare administrators, inter alia by ignoring past meanings of in-kind support as depriving recipients of autonomy, conditionality is extended into in-kind services.

When union representatives are included in government procurement procedures for contracting-out of social welfare services, organizational diversity is enhanced if the job quality parameter, as reflected in the contract, is improved. Asking how unions are treated in government procurement procedures, this paper discusses an approach to diversity management based on the inclusion of unions.

As part of a broader research project, interviews were conducted with six budget administrators and 16 occupational standards administrators employed by the Israeli ministries of Welfare, Education and Health; and with eight trade union activists. Grounded theory was applied for data analysis, revealing meanings of “trade unions” and “job quality.”

Budgeting administrators manifested diversity resistance by means of only partially supporting trade union demands to enhance job quality. Their power position enabled them to prioritize the profit imperative of service providers; the diverse labor force operating the contracted-out service were consequently denied the ostensible benefits of workplace diversity.

Unionization, and trade union participation in social welfare procurement processes, is a potentially effective path to improving job quality and enhancing workplace diversity. However, more must be done to develop the institutional-level processes that will ensure that this potential is utilized to the full.

Including trade unions in social welfare procurement processes is a potentially effective path to improving job quality and enhancing workplace diversity. However, specific actions are required to develop the willingness of budgeting administrators to recognize the association between union participation, job quality and the acknowledged benefit of promoting organizational diversity.

An institutional work perspective was used to detail how budgeting administrators involved in public procurement processes resisted diversity by undermining trade union action for job quality. By identifying three social processes deployed to side-track trade union campaigns for improved job quality, this research shows how the power struggle between budgeting administrators and union representatives ultimately undermines workplace diversity.

When public agencies seek to privatize a service, a commissioning process begins wherein public sector budgeters must decide how generous the funding will be while taking occupational standards into account so that the quality of service is assured. One important area of occupational standards is the required personnel and job sizes of certified employees. Not enough attention has been directed to how occupational standards’ related knowledge is treated in the process. The purpose of this paper is to: first, investigate how the commissioning process is experienced by Israeli, often female, occupational standards administrators. Second, proposing a gendered perspective on Sennett’s corrosion of character thesis.

As part of an institutional ethnography project, 16 interviews were conducted with (14 female and two male) occupational standards administrators at the Israeli Welfare, Education and Health Ministries.

The routine of commissioning involves a stage of using occupational standards’ knowledge and experience, and a stage of dismissing it. The “corrosion of character” embedded in the dismissal stage undermines historical achievements in the area of recognizing caring work and skills.

The research is unable to distinguish between the specific caring occupations discussed.

Service delivery modes has to develop into more publicly visible forums where occupational standards’ are protected.

The continuous corrosion of occupational knowledge may result in the demise of professionalization in care service occupations causing increasingly more polarization and poverty among their employees.

While Sennett’s thesis has already been found plausible for understanding public servants’ experiences of the “new public management,” until recently, not enough attention has been devoted to the commissioning processes’ gendered implications for contract-based delivery of services. This paper examines these implications for the power struggle between the feminist achievements protecting skill recognition in caring occupations, and policy makers.

This paper maps gender‐related outcomes of the World Trade Organization Government Procurement Code (GPC) by highlighting the role of deskilling in changing labor market rewards for women employed in traditionally feminine service occupations.

The emergence of the “contract state” is examined as a major response to the GPC, one, that generates fragmentation and promotes deskilling in public service jobs. Fragmentation is examined by comparing average income in direct public employment and in public procurement contracts.

In the context of service procurement, previous collective agreements recognizing skill and experience are circumvented generating precarious employment for skilled employees.

The analysis unveils the ways in which the contract state through its prioritization of low‐cost bids, promotes women's deskilling in public services. It contributes to a better understanding of the importance of employees' representatives' active participation in tender committees as well as in long‐term auditing of service contractors.

The view that physical education (PE) positively affects students’ perception of their own body efficacy and self-esteem is not often seen as related to issues of gender equality. Nevertheless, PE classes leave many girls with a negative physical experience, of weakness, clumsiness and heaviness. Although the ways in which the beauty myth undermines girls’ self-esteem and body image are quite known, until recently researchers in the field of PE have not focused on the possibility that PE teachers also play a role in disciplining girls’ bodies and subjectivities. Consequently, studies in this area tend to marginalize the covert exclusionary mechanism potentially exerted on girls who find their bodies unsuitable for PE. This study is the first to examine PE in Israel from a gender perspective. Some PE teachers in Israel are already aware to a certain extent of their educational role in legitimizing diversity in girls’ body shapes. How then do PE teachers negotiate this awareness with regard to the dominant discourses related to girls’ bodies? To explore this question, we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 15 PE teachers. The analysis revealed two key features of PE teachers’ talk about girls’ bodies: acceptance of body shape diversity, and awareness of girls’ issues about their bodies. Our findings suggest that these progressive aspects of teachers’ perspectives on girls’ bodies are negotiated against older forms of girls’ body disciplining.

This chapter provides the introduction of the book and argues why gender and feminism matter in theory and praxis in the 21st century. It includes the conceptual interrogation of the meaning of gender and feminism and its practice in western and non-western contexts; global currents in feminist struggles; thematic organization of the book; and the future under ‘feminist eyes’. The thread of shared struggles among diverse groups of women based on selected themes — movements, spaces and rights; inclusion, equity and policies; reproductive labour, work and economy; health, culture and violence; and sports and bodies — situates Canada as a western society with avowed egalitarian ideals favouring gender equality and social justice, but with its own issues and concerns like women in other countries facing their own challenges.

The study's main goal is to investigate different leadership styles that characterize middle-level leaders, the intermediate leadership tier of role holders in school, as they practice leadership scenarios through active participation in a professional learning process of role-play simulation, using a social-ecological approach.

Thirty middle-level leaders from different Israeli high schools and districts participated in the study during an M.A. course in an educational leadership program. The authors used qualitative analysis to examine role-play simulations of leadership scenarios based on group debriefings. This content analysis was conducted within a two-dimensional theoretical framework composed of leadership style theory and a social-ecological model.

The study findings address four main leadership styles: authentic, transformational, participative and transactional. Regarding their appearance within different social-ecological layers, the interpersonal layer was the most salient one with a prominent appearance of transformational and authentic leadership styles. On the organizational and communal layers, authentic leadership was more prominent. The study findings demonstrate multidimensionality in both the leadership styles and social-ecological layers, as different styles appeared in different layers concurrently.

The findings may help articulate the nature and characteristics of middle-level school leadership. They may also provide relevant theoretical content and instructional strategy to develop simulation-based preparation programs for middle-level leaders.

The study findings highlight unique leadership characteristics of middle-level school leaders and suggest a contextual perception of their leadership styles within a social-ecological framework.

Throughout the years, many scholarly answers were given to the question regarding the gender bias in Wikipedia. However, the research literature seldom explores how different barriers are interconnected and rarely focuses on what prevents women who initially declared their interest from eventually participating in the website. The purpose of this paper is to deal with this lacuna and explore the gender bias in Wikipedia through examining how the different barriers are interlinked in a manner that deters women and prevents them from editing in the website.

Based on action research with a mixed evaluation method and two rounds of interviews, the research followed the steps of 27 Israeli women activists who participated in editing workshops.

The findings show that having the will to edit and the knowledge of how to edit are necessary but insufficient conditions for women to participate in Wikipedia. The finding reveals two categories: pre-editing barriers of negative reputation, lack of recognition, anonymity and fear of being erased; and post-editing barriers of experiences of rejection, alienation, lack of time and profit and ownership of knowledge. The research suggests a “Vicious Circle” model, displaying how the five layers of negative reputation, anonymity, fear, alienation and rejection – enhance each other, in a manner that deters women from contributing to the website.

In order for more women to join Wikipedia, the research offers the implantation of a “Virtuous Circle” that consists of nonymity, connection to social media, inclusionist policy, soft deletion and red-flagging harassments.

Throughout the years, many answers were given to the question regarding the gender bias in Wikipedia. However, research literature seldom explores how different barriers are interconnected and rarely focuses on what prevents women who initially declared their interest and who attended editing workshops from eventually participating in the website. The current research has taken upon itself to deal with this lacuna and explores the power-relations in Wikipedia through three questions: first, why an educational intervention did not increase participation? Second, how the different barriers described by research group members are interconnected and enhance each other in a manner that prevents women from editing on the website? and third how can the gap be narrowed?