Employment, Skills and Human Capital
How do you measure competitiveness? Seventy years ago, the founders of the United Nations put our understanding of our shared humanity on paper with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Amid talk of a multiconceptual international order, where hopes for lasting cooperation are replaced by permanent rivalry, young people around the world are remarkably united on the most pressing issue affecting their own countries. It could hold the key to reducing global challenges more broadly. “Once-in-a-lifetime” hurricanes are striking the southern United States with alarming frequency. Hurricane Michael just slammed into the Florida panhandle, and the destructive power of Hurricane Florence is still being felt, especially in North Carolina. Marijuana sales officially began in Canada on Wednesday, making it the first G7 country — and the second country in the world after Uruguay — to legalize the drug for all adults. While many companies adopt a strong approach to diversity simply because it is the right thing to do, they often reap multiple economic benefits from nurturing an inclusive and diverse workforce. Diversity and inclusion bring additional skills, ideas and perspectives. Without trust, innovation is impossible. As we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution, business leaders face a dilemma. How do they leverage the technologies that are driving customer expectations sky high, while people grow skeptical of how organizations are using such technologies? The Fourth Industrial Revolution is expected to wreak havoc on labour markets, with AI and robots replacing various white-collar jobs. One job category largely excluded from scientific reports is that of government leaders, despite being one of the most critiqued, scrutinized and ridiculed jobs of all. Denmark may be the birthplace of the Lego tower, but its workplace hierarchy is the flattest in the world. When Habtamu Worku left his hometown of Bahir Dar seven years ago and moved 550 kilometres (340 miles) south to Addis Ababa, he quickly grew to like the city of 5 million people. A child is presented with a picture of various shapes and is asked to find the big red circle. To come to the answer, she goes through a few steps of reasoning: First, find all the big things; next, find the big things that are red; and finally, pick out the big red thing that’s a circle. Australia aims to ban private or religious schools from expelling students on the basis of their sexuality, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Saturday. I have four kids, ages 5 to 14, and I and know they’re very unlikely to follow the same educational path I did. I’m certain they’ll be preparing themselves for a very different job market. As my youngest is in kindergarten and my oldest just started high school, here are my thoughts for them. The average number of books in a U.S. household is 114, according to a just-published paper called “Scholarly culture: How books in adolescence enhance adult literacy, numeracy and technology skills in 31 societies.” 114 is a good number. The paper’s authors studied 160,000 adults between 2011 and 2015 and found that just having 80 or more books in a home results in adults with significantly higher levels of literacy, numeracy, and information communication technology (ICT) skills. The paper finds, “Growing up with home libraries boosts adult skills in these areas beyond the benefits accrued from parental education or own educational or occupational attainment.” The Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull made worldwide headlines in 2010 when it erupted ash that was blown towards Europe, so that air traffic was grounded across the continent. More recently, the volcano’s bigger sister and neighbour, Katla, has also been in the news. First the papers said the “giant volcano” was ready to blow, yet within days articles were appearing to say it was all a mistake and the eruption news was premature. What is going on? An award-winning design for factory worker housing in Cambodia’s capital will serve as a model for homes in other cities in the rapidly-urbanising country, according to the charity that will build 3,000 units based on the blueprint next year. A material designed by MIT chemical engineers can react with carbon dioxide from the air, to grow, strengthen, and even repair itself. The polymer, which might someday be used as construction or repair material or for protective coatings, continuously converts the greenhouse gas into a carbon-based material that reinforces itself. Disease Please As Chandra Kala heard the blaring horns of a train, she quickened her pace, zig-zagged and elbowed across a teeming platform while hauling a sack of wheat, a suitcase and a backpack. In March this year, the leaders of 44 African countries endorsed the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). Since then more countries, including South Africa, have joined in. For many years, there has been a perceived clash of values in business practice, between the quest for an ethical and sustainable business model, against the more conventional emphasis upon maximizing financial returns to shareholders. However, recent research reveals that some of the most sustainable and ethical approaches to business turn out to be successful in commercial terms. Conversely, sometimes a quest for maximizing short-term returns ends in scandal and/or bankruptcy. How well countries adapt to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) will determine whether they ‘thrive’ or ‘stagnate’ and could further divide workforces and increase social tensions, according to the latest version of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report. Any international economic index that finds America at the pinnacle of global success is sure to invite questions around whether such success can be attributed to the actions of any one leader or administration. To apply this question to the Global Competitiveness Report 2018, let’s first take a look at the facts. Even as globalization has led to unprecedented gains for many from the movement of goods, services, people and ideas, there are those who have lost out – economically, politically or culturally. This has in part contributed to the rise of polarized political debate and populist, nationalist and, at times, extremist agendas, both in the West and in emerging markets. Against this context of citizens’ concerns about jobs, inequality and globalization, policymakers are looking for new pathways to prosperity. This article is part of the World Economic Forum’s Geostrategy platformShow Agenda posts
View more Employment posts
How do you measure competitiveness?
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this is why we need dignity more than ever
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
Why the fight against corruption is this generation’s defining issue
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
What hurricanes and hog manure tell us about carbon pricing
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
Canada has officially legalized marijuana for all adults
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
Why a diverse workplace is a more competitive workplace
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
The power of trust and values in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
Could robot leaders do better than our current politicians?
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
Denmark has the flattest work hierarchy in the world
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
In bid for healthier cities, Ethiopia is going green
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
This AI thinks like you to solve problems
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
Australia wants to ban schools from expelling gay students
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
One father’s advice to his children on the future of work
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
This is how a bookish home helps a child to thrive
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
What an Icelandic volcano tells us about fake news
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
These award-winning homes for Cambodian factory workers are setting a trend
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
This material can grow and repair itself like a plant
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
The percentage of unvaccinated toddlers in the US has quadrupled
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
India’s first women-run train station is proving a huge success
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
Who are the winners and losers in Africa’s Continental Free Trade area?
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
Why family businesses are better equipped to deal with a fractured world
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
These are the world’s most competitive economies
Tuesday 16th of October 2018
What makes America the world’s most competitive economy?
Tuesday 16th of October 2018
10 things you – and your government – should know about competitiveness in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Tuesday 16th of October 2018
Why Asia’s space nations need to choose cooperation over competition
Tuesday 16th of October 2018
Gender Parity
Australia aims to ban private or religious schools from expelling students on the basis of their sexuality, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Saturday. People who were born in New York City and do not identify as male or female can now opt for a third gender category of X on their birth certificates. More than half (53%) of the 79,000 doctoral degrees handed out in the United States last year went to women – a record high. In a new study of adolescent friendship networks, researchers found that for both boys and girls, friend selection and friend influence guided the adoption of risky behaviors, says lead author Cassie McMillan, a doctoral student in sociology and criminology at Penn State. Gender also plays a role in how selection and influence shape a few of those behaviors, including smoking and delinquency, she adds. There is a stubborn stereotype that maths and science are masculine. When Women for Women International and Gender Action for Peace and Security approached the Centre for Women, Peace and Security regarding a research project on the impact of conflict-related displacement on women’s economic empowerment and livelihood needs and opportunities, it was the beginning of a great partnership. This partnership has culminated in a research report and series of policy recommendations drawing on the voices and experiences of displaced women in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The number of female chief executives at the top 500 U.S. companies hit a high last year of 27 women, according to research that experts said shows a glass ceiling remains firmly in place. One of the 2018 Nobel Prizes in physics went to Donna Strickland, a major accomplishment for any scientist. Yet much of the news coverage has focused on the fact that she’s only the third female physicist to receive the award, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer 60 years later. There are certainly measures by which we’ve barely made any progress on gender equality in the workplace. There remains a “pink tax” that has women still making 81.8 percent of what mean earn for the same work performed by men. And there’s still a shocking underrepresentation of women in executive suites. Hive is a productivity platform that works with an impressive roster of large companies, and they wanted to learn more about if and how gender experiences have changed in today’s office spaces. The company was able to anonymously source information from over 3,000 working men and women, and they’ve just released the results of their analysis in their “State of the Workplace Report” on gender. It contains some interesting insights. British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday that heterosexual couples will be allowed to enter into a civil partnership, previously a union only available to those of the same sex. NEW DELHI, Sept 28 (Reuters) – India’s Supreme Court lifted a ban rooted in a centuries-old tradition that prevented women of menstruating age from entering a prominent Hindu temple in southern Kerala state, upholding rights to equality of worship. Women health-care volunteers in low-income countries such as Afghanistan, Nepal and Ethiopia play a vital role in the health-care system, yet they are undervalued and under trained. Many community health programs use volunteer Community Health Workers (CHW) to provide basic health-related services to rural and remote populations. California will require publicly listed companies with headquarters in the state to have at least one woman on their boards of directors by end of 2019, under a bill signed into law on Sunday. This article is part of the World Economic Forum’s Geostrategy platform Efforts to improve female representation in politics have often focused on quotas and reserved shares. What is really needed is a nuanced approach that tackles the underlying, interconnected barriers that women face in getting nominated for elected office and conducting successful campaigns. On a recent summer morning, Suntali Rai was busy counting and stacking zinc sheets as she prepared to lay them on the roof of the house she had started building a month earlier. Leaders of France, Canada and Britain called on world nations on Tuesday to boost efforts to educate girls, warning that “catastrophes” can result from failure to provide access to quality schooling. Women are increasingly represented in central banks. As of June 2018, 13 central banks were headed by women, either on an interim or full-time basis, the most well-known being Elvira Nabiulina in Russia and Karnit Flug in Israel, not to mention the experience of Janet Yellen in the US. However, little is known about the evolution and role of women on monetary policy committees around the world. Globally, the percentage of women pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is small. In Africa, the numbers are even more dismal. The greatest imbalance is in engineering. In 2010 only one in four engineering students was a woman. Guinea had the lowest percentage of women in science (5.8%). That’s equivalent to one in 17. Women’s lives have changed drastically over the past century. Women have surpassed men in earning college degrees, and they are having children later than ever, accumulating increasing amounts of on-the-job experience. Yet, since about 1990, convergence in labour force participation between men and women has stalled, even as societies have made progress on workplace gender discrimination (Blau and Kahn 2017). Why has this stalling occurred, especially as women are more prepared for the labour market than ever? I think about the future of my continent in terms of three questions: Are Africans healthy? Do they have access to a good education? And do they have opportunities to apply their skills? A man who slapped a woman’s bottom on a bus near Paris has been jailed for three months and, in a first under a new law against cat-calling, also fined for lewd remarks about her physique. At the United Nations this week, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has to contend with some daunting challenges – her debut before world leaders and the sleep schedule of her 3-month-old baby. World leaders who have pledged to end gender inequality by 2030 will miss the ambitious target if they do not accelerate efforts to plug “profound” data gaps, experts said ahead of launching a new gender index on Wednesday. Women are underrepresented at all levels of the global financial system, from depositors and borrowers to bank board members and regulators.Show Agenda posts
View more Gender posts
Australia wants to ban schools from expelling gay students
Wednesday 17th of October 2018
You can now pick a gender-neutral X option for birth certificates in New York City
Tuesday 16th of October 2018
Chart of the day: More women than men earned PhDs in the US last year
Monday 15th of October 2018
There’s a gender difference in how our friends influence our behaviour
Monday 15th of October 2018
Study of 1.6 million grades shows little gender difference in maths and science at school
Monday 15th of October 2018
Economic empowerment of women displaced by conflict requires transformative change
Friday 12th of October 2018
Women ran just 1 in 20 top US companies last year
Tuesday 9th of October 2018
Why don’t more women win Nobel Prizes in the sciences?
Tuesday 9th of October 2018
Women are more productive than men, according to new research
Monday 8th of October 2018
Heterosexual couples in the UK will soon be allowed to enter civil partnerships
Thursday 4th of October 2018
India’s top court lifts Hindu temple ban on women of menstruating age
Wednesday 3rd of October 2018
This is the hidden problem women health-care volunteers are facing
Wednesday 3rd of October 2018
Californian companies will need to have at least one female board member by 2019
Tuesday 2nd of October 2018
6 myths holding back the role of women as peace builders
Friday 28th of September 2018
How do we get more women in politics?
Friday 28th of September 2018
A training programme is helping female masons build stronger homes in Nepal
Friday 28th of September 2018
If we fail to educate girls, we’re heading for ‘catastrophes’, warn 3 global leaders
Thursday 27th of September 2018
Women matter in monetary policy-making. Here’s why
Thursday 27th of September 2018
Why fewer Kenyan women are choosing degrees in STEM
Wednesday 26th of September 2018
This is how women anticipate the employment effects of motherhood
Wednesday 26th of September 2018
Empowering women lies at the centre of controlling population growth in Africa
Wednesday 26th of September 2018
For the first time, France has fined a man under new cat-calling laws
Wednesday 26th of September 2018
Jacinda Ardern is making her UN debut – and she’s bringing her baby
Monday 24th of September 2018
Ahead of the 2030 deadline, there are large gaps in the data on gender equality
Monday 24th of September 2018
Why the world needs more female bankers
Monday 24th of September 2018
