The rapid spread of COVID-19 worldwide was accompanied by intense fears, confusion, worries, anger, and stress threatening people’s mental health. Unprecedented measures to slow down and prevent the transmission of COVID-19 have had various impacts on the population’s health behaviour and mental health. The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the lockdown’s effects on university students’ mental health in Romania. Based on a cross-sectional design, the survey data were collected from a sample of 722 participants (247 males; M = 21.1 years; SD ± 1.73). A path analysis was performed to verify the hypothesised direct and indirect effects included in the multiple mediation model. The findings showed a positive association between stress and boredom proneness, missing daily social interactions, spending more time on phone conversations, and the increasing interest in following news about the pandemic. The path analysis revealed an excellent fit between the proposed multiple mediation model and the sample data. Boredom proneness and missing daily social interactions both affected stress, directly and indirectly, through more time spent on phone conversations. In addition, it was found that the increased interest in following news about the pandemic mediated the relationship between boredom proneness and perceived stress. In terms of gender differences, our findings revealed that female students experienced significantly higher stress levels than male students, perceived to a greater extent the lack of daily social interactions, and spent more time on phone conversations. Overall, the findings further extend the empirical evidence on university students’ mental health in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, universities need to organise support programmes focused on developing university students’ coping strategies to maintain their mental health even in adverse contexts.
Recent academic debate into women's experiences of tourism employment has emphasised the extremely heterogeneous nature of such work and the need for sensitivity to local political, economic, social and cultural contexts. This paper focuses on one such context which has received little attention -state socialism -and we explore women's experiences of tourism work in socialist Romania. Such work had characteristics in common with nonsocialist contexts, but in other ways took a form which was distinctive to the socialist state. It was characterised by extensive training, good pay, and opportunities for promotion (at least to middle management level). The socialist state also devised unique solutions to the problem of the seasonality of tourism work. However women also faced extensive surveillance by the state's security services and faced harsh penalties for under-performance.KEY WORDS: tourism employment, gender, socialist-era tourism, Romania Exploring women's employment in tourism under state-socialism: Experiences of tourism work in socialist Romania This paper explores the experiences of women working in the tourism sector of a statesocialist regime. The issue of women's employment in tourism is the subject of increasing academic scrutiny but, with a few exceptions, their experiences of tourism work in socialist regimes has been overlooked. This is a clear gap in the research literature and one which is important to develop, since an important theme which emerges from previous research is the heterogeneity of women's experiences of tourism work (Scott, 1997; Gentry, 2007) and the need to avoid over-generalisations about the nature of tourism employment for women.Furthermore, there is a need to be sensitive to "localised, contextualised and pluralised power relations" (Aitchison, 2005: 220) which means that women's work in tourism will take different forms in different locations, reflecting specific social, economic and cultural circumstances (Scott, 1997; Gibsen, 2001; Tucker, 2007; Tucker and Boonabaana, 2012).Focusing on women's historical experiences of working in tourism in socialist states has an important role to play in understanding how tourism employment is influenced and shaped by its particular context. Socialist states are (or have been) characterised by an explicit rejection of capitalism and a high degree of state intervention in the planning and development of tourism. Moreover, they are often characterised by centralised and authoritarian rule. In such circumstances, tourism can unfold in a manner that is different from that in capitalist states, meaning that tourism employment can also take distinct forms that merit investigation in their own right. Moreover, a key ideological goal of socialist states was to challenge traditional gender inequalities (Zamfir and Zamfir, 2000) and, while it cannot be claimed that women achieved equality under such regimes, it makes them an important context in which to examine the nature of women's work in tourism. This paper therefore contributes to...
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