The Global Gender Gap Report 2014
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Through the Global Gender Gap Report 2014, the World Economic Forum quantifies the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracks their progress over time. While no single measure can capture the complete situation, the Global Gender Gap Index presented in this Report seeks to measure one important aspect of gender equality: the relative gaps between women and men across four key areas: health, education, economy and politics.
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Here’s why we shouldn’t rely on translation technology for languages
Friday 20th of October 2017
For many years now, there have been calls for Australians to learn languages, particularly Asian languages, as the world economy pivots to the Asia-Pacific. But the number of students learning languages in Australia has remained stubbornly low.
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The world’s first floating wind farm has opened off the coast of Scotland
Friday 20th of October 2017
The world’s first floating offshore wind farm started producing electricity off the Scottish coast on Wednesday.
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The US want to regulate political advertising on social media
Thursday 19th of October 2017
The US Congress wants to regulate Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other internet companies like broadcasting companies.
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Why do women still make less than men?
Thursday 19th of October 2017
The Issue:
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Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos’ mentor used a simple test to figure out who is a true leader
Thursday 19th of October 2017
You can have the most impressive title in the world and still not be a leader.
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This Belgian startup is turning your old plastic into brand new sunglasses
Thursday 19th of October 2017
A Belgium-based start-up is on its way to making the world a bit sunnier, by printing the first 3D sunglasses out of recycled plastic.
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How online dating has changed our society
Thursday 19th of October 2017
It’s a Match!
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5 ways policy could close the gender gap in entrepreneurship
Thursday 19th of October 2017
Despite a closing of the gender gap in labour force participation rates in OECD countries over the past 25 years, women continue to be under-represented in entrepreneurship.
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This country will scrap coal power in just over a decade
Thursday 19th of October 2017
The Netherlands’ new government has announced plans to close all coal power plants by 2030. Closures will include three of the most efficient plants made in 2015, which should help the country achieve its goal of a 49 percent reduction in emissions.
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Funny people are also more intelligent, according to new research
Thursday 19th of October 2017
Albert Einstein attributed his brilliant mind to having a child-like sense of humour. Indeed, a number of studies have found an association between humour and intelligence.
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What renewable energy can do for healthcare in India
Thursday 19th of October 2017
Sarguja, a district in India’s central Chhattisgarh state, is representative of the country’s rural healthcare situation: high infant mortality (52 per 1000 live births) and low proportions of children who are fully immunized (58%). For a largely rural population, only a small proportion (about one-third) of the state’s rural health centres have regular electricity supply.
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How we can make globalization more inclusive
Thursday 19th of October 2017
Globalisation has reached new highs in the 21st century. Together with technological progress, it has brought benefits to many, but the gains have not been distributed evenly, often fuelling discontent. While global poverty and global inequality has been declining in recent decades (Milanovic 2016), in many (advanced, emerging and developing) countries, globalisation and/or technological progress have resulted in job polarization and higher within-country inequality (Piketty 2013, Autor et al. 2017). Furthermore, as those left behind have given their support to populist politicians and their nativist agendas, there is now an increased attention by economists to the relationship between globalisation and technological progress on the one hand, and high or rising inequality (of outcomes and of opportunity) on the other (Rodrik 2017). Recent research has provided many insights on why deepening global integration may give rise to rising inequality at the national level (Leipziger 2016). There is, however, much less discussion of potential solutions.
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Millennials are being ‘left behind,’ and it poses a huge risk to the US economy
Thursday 19th of October 2017
The unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% in September, its lowest since February 2001, and yet consumer loan defaults keep creeping up.
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Boy Scouts will allow girls to join. But not everyone’s happy
Thursday 19th of October 2017
For over 100 years, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has been a boys-only club. But not any more. The organization has just announced that it is going to welcome girls.
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Climate change, food security and sustaining peace
Thursday 19th of October 2017
This article is part of the World Economic Forum’s Geostrategy platform
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Digital technologies can deliver better healthcare to sub-Saharan Africa. Here’s how
Thursday 19th of October 2017
Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 13% of the world’s population, yet bears 24% of the global disease burden and has only 2% of the world’s doctors. The grim health situation is the result of a crisis in healthcare investments in the continent; with only 1% of the world’s health expenditure being used in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Here’s what it would cost to move to one of the world’s largest megacities
Thursday 19th of October 2017
In 1975, just three of the world’s urban centers — Tokyo, New York, and Mexico City — had more than 10 million residents.
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To train tomorrow’s leaders, universities need to teach universal skillsets
Thursday 19th of October 2017
Our first three industrial revolutions have typically been defined by the specific technological advances that enabled them (steam engines, electricity and computers, respectively). Now, well into the 21st century, we are entering a Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), characterized by the parallel development of a swath of seemingly independent technologies, each with world-changing potential. From artificial intelligence to genetic engineering, virtual reality, and digital currencies, these advances each promise huge benefits to society. Yet this Utopian view does not tell the whole story as the 4IR also poses serious challenges.
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A simple guide to the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th congress
Thursday 19th of October 2017
In case you hadn’t heard, something huge is going down in China this week. So huge that the internet has been disrupted, popular TV shows have been cancelled, and Beijing’s sky will turn perfectly blue.
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10 ways governments can better keep up with fast-changing industries
Thursday 19th of October 2017
How should law and regulation cope with fast changing technologies and industries? How should they balance the risks that come with new ideas and the risks of crushing them? And how should they help to ensure that the benefits of new technologies are widely spread?
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Why reproductive rights are the first step to a freer, fairer world
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
In Bangkok’s sprawling outer suburbs, the Emergency Home offers a secure haven, providing crisis care and shelter for adolescent and teenaged girls like Fern who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant, desperate and with nowhere else to go. Fern is 18, the youngest here is just 13, and the other residents fall somewhere in-between.
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#MeToo, the most dangerous cities for women and other top gender stories of the week
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
World’s largest cities ranked on gender equality. (Next City)
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Running tracks, sleep pods and treehouses: how companies are helping you work
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
The world has moved on since an office with beanbags and a ping-pong table was the height of workplace cool.
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The neuroscience on how to motivate a teenager
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
It may not be the meek that inherit the earth but the unhealthy. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 81% of young people are not getting enough exercise, 18% are obese and 75% of mental health problems will have emerged by the age of 24.
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#MeToo, #balancetonporc, #yotambien: women around the world fight back at harassment
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
The allegations against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein have prompted women around the world to share experiences of sexual harassment and assault on social media to end a culture of silence.
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Free Viagra but no birth control? Here’s how that works out economically
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
“There is, perhaps, one invention that historians a thousand years in the future will look back on and say: that defined the 20th century,” The Economist wrote in 1999. “That invention is the contraceptive pill.”
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The age of robots could be a new Renaissance. This is why
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
Why have humans created machines? Technology is born from the human desire to save time in order to invest it in fantasy. Technology generates time and space for the activities that make us quintessentially human: creativity and entrepreneurship, inventiveness, and empathy. It serves us by alleviating suffering and creating solutions to grow and fulfil our aspirations – from curing cancer to landing on Mars.
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Three ways to redefine corporate philanthropy for the 21st century
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
What are the problem-solving sectors in a society? For many, there are just two: government and business. The space in between is often ignored, but no less important. That space – a third sector between legislative action and for-profit enterprise – has long been one of the most effective in defining and addressing a myriad of social problems.
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These are the most dangerous megacities for women
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
London, Oct 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Cairo is the world’s most dangerous megacity for women while London is the best, according to the first international experts’ poll on how females fare in the rising number of cities with over 10 million people.
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China and India can teach the developing world a lot
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
Indonesia shares similar characteristics with China and India as Asian countries that have more people between the ages of 15 and 64 than young children and the elderly.
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Morgan Freeman shares his approach to ‘discipline’ that keeps him working at age 80
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
At 80 years old, Morgan Freeman is as active as he’s ever been in film and television.
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This nation might be single-handedly changing the future of transport
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
Between electric vehicles and self-driving cars, it’s no secret that transportation is changing rapidly. A massive amount of research and development in this field is taking place in the Netherlands.
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Is this the key to unlocking India’s huge tourism potential?
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
India’s culture and diversity make it a land of unlimited opportunities. Each city and state has so much to offer in terms of the heritage, architecture and experience that can be explored. India’s tourism potential is huge.
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Would you ace these Oxford University interview questions?
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
The University of Oxford has released sample interview questions from tutors who conduct Oxford interviews. The questions were released ahead of the deadline day for students to apply to study at Oxford University next year (15 October). Students applying to study French might be asked about the difference between reading a work in its original language compared to a translation, while aspiring doctors might be asked to discuss and rank the mortality rates of several countries from around the world.
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Venture capital spending hits a 21st Century high
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
Venture capital spending in the United States is on track to be the highest since the turn of the millennium this year, despite an ongoing decline in the number of deals. In the first three quarters of 2017, venture capital firms invested a total of $61.4 billion in 5,948 completed deals. According to data from Pitchbook-NVCA Venture Monitor, the number of deals through the first nine months of this year was the lowest since 2011, when 5,104 VC deals were closed between January and September.Meanwhile the average deal size increased to a decade high of $10.3 million this year, as startup companies tend to stay private longer and draw massive late-stage funding rounds. The median deal size for later stage VC rounds was $11 million in the first three quarters of 2017, compared to $1 million for angel/seed investments and $6 million for early stage VC deals. Despite the increase in so-called megadeals such as the $4.4 billion investment that office rental startup WeWork secured from SoftBank earlier this year, the total investment volume is still way off its late 90s/early 2000s peak. In 2000, at the height of the tech bubble, VC investment in the U.S. amounted to more than $180 billion which is more than twice the total that VC firms will likely end up spending this year.
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This is what Americans think has improved their lives the most
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
When Americans are asked what has brought the biggest improvement to their lives in the past five decades, they name technology more than any other advancement. And as Americans think about the next 50 years, they expect that technology, along with medical advances, will continue to have a major impact, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted May to June of this year.
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The Middle East’s biggest ride-hailing firm is hiring women drivers in Saudi Arabia
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
The Middle East’s biggest ride-hailing firm, Careem, is reportedly planning to hire up to 100,000 female chauffeurs in Saudi Arabia following the Kingdom’s landmark ruling allowing women to drive for the first time.
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What risks are keeping Asia’s business leaders up at night?
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
While the main concerns for business leaders in the Asia-Pacific continue to be economic risks, cyber security and socio-political instability also feature in the top-five risks as identified by executives in the region.
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This tiny nation has become a “living lab” for urban innovation
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
When you think of innovation hubs around the world, Andorra, a tiny country tucked between Spain and France, may not come to mind.
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Aquaculture could feed the world and protect the planet – if we get it right
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
What if we had the chance to reinvent the world’s food system and make local, more sustainable food the norm rather than the exception?
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Your government is in need of an update
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
As Executive Director of the UK’s Government Digital Service, Mike Bracken faced no easy task. He was charged with bringing all public services online – an undertaking he discovered would be made all the more difficult by Whitehall’s workplace culture. Government departments, he found, were stubbornly siloed, with no inclination to share information or collaborate – even when in their best interest.
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Facebook has bought ‘kindness’ app that’s just two months old
Wednesday 18th of October 2017
Facebook has acquired a two-month-old app called tbh—as in “to be honest”—which lets people send each other positive feedback through anonymous, quiz-style polls. The app is geared toward teenagers, and has been a viral hit in the US.
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Diplomats and designers are key to solving climate change. Here’s how they think we can do it
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
Diplomacy and design are both science and art, technical professions that adhere to the rules of politics and physics but celebrate charisma and creativity. The two disciplines are rarely in conversation, lacking common language and institutions. Nonetheless, diplomats and designers increasingly take up the same questions and challenges from terrorism to sustainable development and climate change.
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Here’s how you can build trust in the workplace – from a counterintelligence expert
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
Building good teams starts with having strong relationships based on a foundation of trust. But how does one develop that trust at work or in life? Counterintelligence expert Robin Dreeke, who spent decades as a senior FBI agent, knows how to make strangers trust him enough to be recruited as spies. And it’s not about deception or being a ‘yes’ man. In the book, The Code of Trust: An American Counterintelligence Expert’s Five Rules to Lead and Succeed, Dreeke and co-author Cameron Stauth share simple steps to generating trust from all sorts of people. They recently joined the [email protected] show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111, to discuss the concepts in more detail.
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Students learn better from books than screens, according to a new study
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
Today’s students see themselves as digital natives, the first generation to grow up surrounded by technology like smartphones, tablets and e-readers.
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Scientists have found a drug that can repair cavities and regrow teeth
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
In brief
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The Dutch have built a cycle lane from used toilet paper
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
Can you imagine cycling on a road made from used toilet paper? The Dutch – known for their love of two-wheeled transport – are doing just that, thanks to an innovative waste recycling scheme.
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What President Trump’s latest move means for the Iran nuclear deal
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
Donald Trump hasn’t definitively killed the Iran nuclear agreement but he has lit the fuse that might blow it up eventually. Standing in the diplomatic room of the White House on October 13, he said that he could no longer certify Iranian compliance with the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran, he said, is not living up to the spirit of the agreement.
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City living makes you healthier and happier. Here’s why
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
Can living in a densely populated urban centre make you healthier and happier? Yes, according to a study that found that city dwellers have lower rates of obesity and socialize more than people who live in the suburbs.
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Even young children can be guilty of racist bias
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
Racial bias can seem like an intractable problem. Psychologists and other social scientists have had difficulty finding effective ways to counter it – even among people who say they support a fairer, more egalitarian society. One likely reason for the difficulty is that most efforts have been directed toward adults, whose biases and prejudices are often firmly entrenched.
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Satellites are giving us a totally new view of Earth’s carbon cycle
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
The job of monitoring Earth’s carbon cycle and humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions is increasingly supported from above, thanks to the terabytes of data pouring down to Earth from satellites.
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People in San Francisco are wearing face masks because the air quality is so bad
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
On Thursday morning, the air quality in the Bay Area was worse than in Beijing, which is notorious for having some of the unhealthiest air in the world. In what is being called one of the worst firestorms in California history, smoke heavy with soot continues to blow across the state.
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These are the safest cities around the world
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
Big cities aren’t necessarily unsafe.
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Syrian refugees are getting a new life as virtual teachers
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
Lebanese entrepreneur Aline Sara saw a gap in the market while hunting for Arabic conversation classes in the West. She connects highly skilled Syrian refugees with Arabic learners around the world, providing much-needed work for the teachers.
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This island will now let you pay for citizenship with Bitcoin
Tuesday 17th of October 2017
You can now purchase citizenship of the country with the world’s 34th most powerful passport with bitcoin.
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Global ocean governance is all at sea. It’s time to fix it
Monday 16th of October 2017
The 1982 UN Law of the Sea was the largest ever annexation of our planet and our ocean. In one stroke, one-third of our planet was formally designated as ‘exclusive economic zones’, giving coastal countries rights to 200 miles of ocean around their continental shelf. The law came into force in 1994.
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5 big ideas to reboot democracy in the EU
Monday 16th of October 2017
There is a widespread, intensifying belief that without the greater involvement of its citizens, the European Union is condemned to fail. While this realization is far from new, recent events in Catalonia along with Brexit have lent it fresh force.
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Venture capitalists with daughters make better deals
Monday 16th of October 2017
Venture capitalists with daughters are more likely to be successful than those with sons.
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Too many people are asking themselves the wrong question about their career
Monday 16th of October 2017
When you’re stuck in a less-than-fulfilling job, everyone else’s work can start to look more appealing than yours. So it can be tempting to grab the first opportunity that comes your way — because your new boss is nice, the hours are less grueling, or the snacks are plentiful.
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Green power is rising but fossil fuels will still dominate energy in 2040
Monday 16th of October 2017
The world seems to be undergoing a sustainable energy revolution. For instance, Dubai, home to one of the globe’s largest solar energy plants, aims to use it to generate about 75% of its electricity by 2050.