Category: Gender, Women and Girls

Africa, Gender, Women and Girls, New social contract

How women African entrepreneurs can overcome the “beauty pageant problem”

By Miishe Addy, co-Founder and CEO of Jetstream Africa, an e-logistics startup building digital infrastructure for African supply chains.

Growing up, I thought that the women in my family were remarkable. They had strong entrepreneurial instincts, and built businesses from scratch using only their intellect and the resources around them. My eldest aunt founded a thriving restaurant, spun off a catering business, and turned her car into a taxi service while she was at work. Her younger sister founded a crèche and scaled it up to a 200-student primary and secondary school. My great-grandmother, born in the late 1800s, was a self-made businesswoman in Accra and the breadwinner for her family.

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Transformative change for gender equality
Gender, Women and Girls, New social contract

What is transformative change for gender equality and how do we achieve it?

By Jenny Hedman, Policy Analyst, Lisa Williams, Gender Team Lead and Laura McDonald, Policy Analyst, Development Co-operation Directorate, OECD

Prioritising gender equality in development is crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. But to make sure the impacts of efforts are truly sustainable requires that imbalances in power relations between men and women are addressed, as well as the visible and invisible structures and norms that uphold these inequalities. This is what we call transformative change.

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How Colombia made abortions legal
Gender, Women and Girls, Latin America and the Caribbean, New social contract

Colombia’s landmark abortion ruling

By Catalina Martínez Coral, Senior Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Center for Reproductive Rights, and spokesperson for the Causa Justa movement

On 21 February 2022, Colombia’s Constitutional Court issued a historic ruling decriminalising abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. After this period, abortion will only be permitted in certain circumstances. This decision was widely celebrated by the feminist movement and other voices in the country, who hailed it as a major step forward not only for women’s rights but also for democracy and social justice. Colombia is now at the forefront of reproductive rights, joining other countries of the global south that today set an example in Latin America and worldwide.

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Building resilience, Covid-19, Gender, Women and Girls

Towards gender-inclusive industrialisation in a post-pandemic world

By Elissa Braunstein, Colorado State University, Elisa Calza and Alejandro Lavopa, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)[1]

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world unlike any other crisis in recent history. During 2020, world gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 3.3%, the deepest global recession in 70 years, with an estimated loss of 255 million full-time employment jobs and an additional 97 million people falling into poverty. The effects were especially severe in developing and emerging industrial economies, which suffered an average estimated output loss of 7.7% compared to 3.9% for industrialised economies, according to the UNIDO Industrial Development Report 2022. Within countries, SMEs were more likely to shut down operations than large firms and suffered larger declines in sales and profits. Across workers, women experienced greater labour-market losses than men.

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Bangladesh graduation commonwealth
Gender, Women and Girls, New social contract

Why intersectional feminism matters for development

By Aviva Stein, Co-founder and Strategic Development Consultant at Catalystas Consulting, an intersectional feminist consulting collective working on international development

The future is female. But it is also climate aware, energy efficient, and well-fed with nutritious and sustainably produced food. It provides equitable access to basic services, education, and economic empowerment – regardless of level of (dis)ability, socioeconomic status, or racial, ethnic, and religious background. While this future may take some time to build, intersectional feminism can play a key role in ensuring we realise the change we envision.

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Gender, Women and Girls, Latin America and the Caribbean, New social contract

The Peruvian women thriving around the world 

By Ana Lucía Gutiérrez González, Producer of Granadilla Podcast – Peruanas rompiéndola en el extranjero[1], Peruvian based in Israel

Over 50% of migrants from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela in 2019, were women. According to the First World Survey for the Peruvian Community Abroad in 2020, around 3.5 million Peruvians were living abroad, more than 10% of the Peruvian population. Of these, 9% are professional migrants – white-collar workers, scientists and researchers, for example. They form part of what I consider to be Peru’s sixth wave of migration. 

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Development Matters
Gender, Women and Girls, New social contract

Why women are made to rely on vulnerable work

By Maria C. Lo Bue, Research Associate at UNU-WIDER, Lecturer in the Department of Economics and Finance, University of Bari; Tu Thi Ngoc Le, Tu Thi Ngoc Le, PhD in Economics, Hoa Sen University; Manuel Santos Silva, Postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Economics, University of Münster; and Kunal Sen, Director of UNU-WIDER; Professor of Development Economics at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

The gender pay-gap is one of the foremost indicators of gender inequality and thus a guide for women’s economic empowerment policies. Although there is abundant data available on the phenomenon in OECD economies, this is not the case for the majority of developing countries, where most workers are self-employed and do not receive a regular wage, making it difficult to measure “pay gaps for similar work”. In a recent study for the United Nations University, we took a different approach, examining the gender gap in vulnerable employment in 101 developing countries worldwide. The results have important implications for policymakers.

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Africa, Gender, Women and Girls, New social contract

Women and conflict in West Africa and beyond

By Dr Diene Keita, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director (Programme), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

Women are deliberately targeted in conflict

When conflict happens, the rule of law breaks down, freedom of movement is restricted, institutions and services are weakened, creating a lack of access to social services and information, and to food and livelihoods. This situation affects the entire population, but it disproportionately affects women. Research has shown that female-headed households are more vulnerable to stress and less capable of absorbing shocks, due to gender inequality, cultural restrictions and the feminisation of poverty. Conflict affects women and men differently and existing gender inequalities are compounded in times of conflict. Women and girls make up a large proportion of internally displaced populations (IDPs) and refugees. In Burkina Faso, 51% of IDPs are girls under the age of 14. Moreover, gender norms that associate masculinity with aggression make men more likely to perpetrate violence against those over whom they have power – usually women and children.

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Building resilience, Gender, Women and Girls, New social contract

Think global, act local: unpacking progress towards ending child marriage and averting the setbacks of COVID-19

By Chiara Orlassino, Research Adviser and Gabrielle Szabo, Senior Gender Equality Adviser, Save the Children UK1

In 2021, over 28,000 girls got married on International Women’s Day. Ten years from now, the number might still be as high as 26,000 – a far cry from the net zero target of Agenda 2030 (Fig. 1). The grim estimate for 2030 doesn’t even take into account the impact of COVID-19 on child marriage rates, although evidence shows that the pandemic is having a detrimental effect on girls’ rights. With only 10 years to go to 2030, we reflect on progress made on one of the most important Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and call for urgent action on inequalities in particular, which COVID-19 is exacerbating. The Generation Equality forum convened by UN Women is a timely process to prioritise gender equality in recovery efforts, building momentum around economic and political investment in girls’ rights.

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Gender, Women and Girls

Dewi’s story: discriminatory social institutions hold women back in Southeast Asia

By Pierre de Boisséson, Economist, and Alejandra Meneses, Policy Analyst, OECD Development Centre

Human development relies on three fundamental building blocks — health, education and income. A recent report from the OECD Development Centre shows that in Southeast Asia, women’s human development remains severely constrained by discriminatory social institutions, in other words, formal and informal laws, practices and social norms. These socially and culturally embedded norms, attitudes and behaviour limit women’s ability to control and make decisions on their own health, education and access to labour opportunities. Dewi’s story is especially telling.

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