How many times have you rolled your eyes when someone said a country is progressive because half the parliament is made up of women? How much can this really tell us about gender equality and women’s participation in any particular country? Why does it even matter? As such a hot topic, I was excited to hear all about Catie Lott’s PhD dissertation, ‘Diamonds are a Woman’s Best Friend: Broadening Measures of Women’s Access to Formal Political Decision-Making’. Her doctorate looked at female policy...
As the world’s largest online and user-generated encyclopaedia, Wikipedia is an education medium used by students across the word. However, as with textbooks and educational materials in any society, Wikipedia suffers from great divisions and has the potential to shape our view of the world. For every four articles about men, just one article exists about a woman – and just 10% of content creators and editors on Wikipedia are women. Even more worrying is that the trend is declining: UNU-MERIT re...
Despite the fact that women comprise half the world’s population, gender inequality persists worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Beyond gender-based violence, this inequality manifests in various ways: from unequal control over resources, to unequal distribution of household duties, to legal or cultural constraints on women’s socio-economic mobility. So argue Dr. Micheline Goedhuys and Prof. Eleonora Nillesen in a new policy brief. Achieving gender equality is important i...
Every year on 11 February, the United Nations, partners worldwide, women and girls mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Why does it matter? Recent studies suggest that 65% of children entering primary school today will have jobs that do not yet exist. While more girls are attending school than before, girls are significantly under-represented in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects in many settings and they appear to lose interest in STEM subjects a...
A joint post by Tamara Kool and Theresa Ammann In this blog post we connect the current political climate with our current research project that systematically analyses the existing literature on ‘Gender’ and ‘Human Security’. … The global rise of authoritarian movements and the entry of far-right parties into parliaments and governments alike (for example but not limited to, Denmark, Brazil, Hungary, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, the Netherlands, USA) is a concerning trend. Looking close...
A survey co-led by researchers at UNU-MERIT has found that women’s economic empowerment in Tunisia remains low, in spite of a nationwide strengthening of legal protections. There was progress, however, on women’s leadership and time use thanks to improvements in education and training. The results of the survey, presented 11 May 2018 at a workshop in Tunis co-hosted by the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR), showed that 95% of women living in households with a ma...
Do you know gender? I thought I did. I knew what it basically meant: man and woman, boy and girl, lion and lioness etc. And I had helped women and girls all my student and professional life as a social activist and was confident that I knew what had to be known. So I felt safe. That was until as a UN staffer, I was asked to take its ‘I know gender’ course. Here, the bitter truth of what I teach my own students drove its stake through my time. Availability, we teach students of the economics of i...
“Does having women in power empower women per se?” This was the bold question put to Helen Clark, former chief of UNDP, during a one-hour debate co-hosted by UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University — and it was a question that got a suitably robust response! PhD fellow Ibrahima Kaba, our moderator for the afternoon, peppered and quizzed Ms. Clark about prospects for Africa, the future of the UN, and the viability of the Sustainable Development Goals. Given her recent run to be th...
Boats are floating on the still surface of a bay in Northwest Tanzania. I have come to a village in the Kigoma region to do research on small-scale fishing and the value chain from lake to market. I am here to look especially at the different roles played by men and women, to identify gender-based barriers, and to find ways to upgrade the entire process....
Female research scientists are more productive than their male colleagues, though they are widely perceived as being less so. Women are also rewarded less for their scientific achievements....