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.
Latest blog posts >>
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Cybersecurity’s greatest weakness is also its best line of defence
Friday 16th of November 2018
This article is part of the World Economic Forum’s Geostrategy platform
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Why the UN is investigating poverty in the United Kingdom
Friday 16th of November 2018
For the past 12 days Philip Alston, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has been investigating the poverty of a nation in 2018.
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Destroying nuclear waste to create clean energy? It can be done
Friday 16th of November 2018
If not for long-term radioactive waste, then nuclear power would be the ultimate “green” energy. The alternative to uranium is thorium, a radioactive ore whose natural decay is responsible for half of our geothermal energy, which we think of as “green energy.” More than 20 years of research at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), the birthplace of the internet and where Higgs boson was discovered, demonstrate that thorium could become a radically disruptive source of clean energy providing bountiful electricity any place and at any time.
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Innovation is the key to the pay-TV industry’s long-term growth
Friday 16th of November 2018
In the world of pay-TV there is now only one constant we can rely on – change. Consumers are constantly demanding more for less, while increasing competition from new entrants is flooding the market, and the cost of content investments is going up.
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Deep fakes could threaten democracy. What are they and what can be done?
Friday 16th of November 2018
Will deep-fake technology destroy democracy, asked the New York Times. While some of us are just learning the jargon, others expect that we’ll enter this brave new post-fact world in a year or two. Concerned with the emerging tech trend, a group of US lawmakers sent a letter to the Director of National Intelligence with this warning:
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Globalization 4.0 means harnessing the power of the group
Friday 16th of November 2018
How might we prepare global residents for the future of work? Past waves of globalization offer lessons on what it will take to more effectively weather the transition. As leaders consider how to shape a new architecture for Globalization 4.0 (the theme of the World Economic Forum’s 2019 Annual Meeting), we must prioritize the goal of addressing persistent inequalities – particularly those based on race, income, gender and place. This is the moonshot of our generation.
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Cashless Sweden, the new Great Game and other top stories of the week
Friday 16th of November 2018
Why the next economic crisis could lead to global military conflict.⇒ Explore: Geo-economicsA cashless society is near. Cash in Sweden is now less than 1% of GDP.⇒ Explore: Banking and Capital MarketsThe new Great Game. How technology is driving Globalization 4.0.Where alarm bells should be ringing. The top risks for business, by region.
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Globalization 4.0 must build a better world for working people
Friday 16th of November 2018
Globalization is no longer assured as the world’s people circle the wagons. They’re looking for cover, looking for protection, getting ready to defend themselves from corporate and authoritarian power.
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4 ways 3D printing can revolutionize manufacturing
Friday 16th of November 2018
These are exciting times in additive manufacturing (AM) – the process of building objects by 3D printing – as the industry moves from prototyping and design towards production at scale. This evolution is not a surprise: the industry is delivering on its initial promise of scalable additive manufacturing.
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Don’t dismiss start-ups founded by millennials. This is how they succeed
Friday 16th of November 2018
To maximize your chances of building a successful start-up, you should wait until your 42nd birthday to become an entrepreneur, advises a recent MIT study. Unsurprisingly, younger founders are often less experienced and consequently have a lower chance of success. Multiple factors play a role, including industry knowledge, human capital and access to financial resources. We spoke to 10 millennial founders after their first major funding round, in order to understand the critical factor that only comes with experience.
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French officials are going to work at Facebook for 6 months
Friday 16th of November 2018
Facebook will allow French regulators to “embed” inside the company to examine how it combats online hate speech, the first time the wary tech giant has opened its doors in such a way, President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday.
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There’s a physical activity gender gap – but nature could be the answer
Friday 16th of November 2018
Supporting girls and women in their efforts to be physically active must become a global public health priority. Preliminary results from our research at Dalhousie University suggests that access to nature may be key to achieving this.
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These Colombian fishermen are being paid to farm coral in an underwater garden
Friday 16th of November 2018
For nearly three decades, Javier Barker has fished in the Caribbean Sea surrounding the Colombian island of San Andres – but until recently he knew little about the importance of coral reefs that fish depend on to survive.
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In India, IKEA is going to use agricultural waste to make furniture – and tackle pollution
Friday 16th of November 2018
Swedish furniture retailing giant IKEA believes it has a hack for Delhi’s pollution woes.
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Kenyan farmers are ‘tree hopping’
Friday 16th of November 2018
The sun beat down on Samuel Rono’s farm in Kerita, a village in southern Kenya, as six young men struggled to load one of several large trees into a waiting truck.
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The Earth has more than one ‘moon’
Friday 16th of November 2018
Two massive clouds of dust in orbit around the Earth have been discussed for years and finally proven to exist.
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For thousands of years, humans slept in two shifts. Should we do it again?
Friday 16th of November 2018
Researchers believe that the practice of sleeping through the whole night didn’t really take hold until just a few hundred years ago.
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China’s ‘artificial sun’ is now hot enough for nuclear fusion
Friday 16th of November 2018
It’s a hot one
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This is the link between coping with uncertainty and our mental health
Friday 16th of November 2018
Not knowing is an uncomfortable experience. As human beings, we are naturally curious. We seek to understand, predict and control – it helps us learn and it keeps us safe. Uncertainty can feel dangerous because we cannot predict with complete confidence what will happen. As a result, both our hearts and minds may race.
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Christine Lagarde: The case for a new digital currency
Friday 16th of November 2018
This is a transcript of a speech to the Singapore Fintech Festival.
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How to future-proof India’s economy
Friday 16th of November 2018
Steady and resilient growth performance by multiple Asian economies has led to the centre of gravity of global geopolitics shifting towards Asia. Amid the changing power balance between nations, India has emerged as a bright spot and potential global leader. With an average growth rate of 7.2%, a favourable demographic profile and a large and growing consumer market, India is likely to be the most compelling growth story of the decade.
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How our food system is eating away at nature, and our future
Friday 16th of November 2018
As you eat your next meal, ask yourself if you really know what you’re eating – not just the ingredients or where they came from, but what has gone into them. How much land was needed? How much water was used? How much energy was required? We need to ask ourselves these questions, because how we produce, consume and, sadly, waste food poses a massive threat to our future.
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What do toilets have to do with climate change?
Friday 16th of November 2018
It’s a connection we don’t make very often. But the rise in extreme weather events is proving challenging to sanitation systems around the world. While the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.2 calls for universal sanitation, 4.5 billion people globally lack safely managed services.
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Bitcoin mining uses as much energy as mining for gold, according to new research
Friday 16th of November 2018
New study reveals that mining crypto can be use more energy than mine for gold.
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Every year, South Korea comes to a standstill for an exam marathon
Thursday 15th of November 2018
Silence. No hammering from construction sites. No planes taking off. Even the banks stay shut on the most important day of the year for South Korea’s students.
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These refugee children have danced in the snow for the first time
Thursday 15th of November 2018
The smiles on their faces and squeals of excitement said it all – a young brother and sister from Eritrea were seeing snow for the first time ever, in their adoptive new home of Canada.
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We need to understand more about the role of women as peacekeepers. Here’s why
Thursday 15th of November 2018
This article is part of the World Economic Forum’s Geostrategy platform
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Stressed at work? This is the effect your boss is having
Thursday 15th of November 2018
Everybody knows how horrible it is to be stressed out at work. Sadly, across the world, employees are being subjected to increasing work demands and, as a result, work stress is on the rise. As we try to understand the root of the problem, we often end up blaming our boss.
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Alibaba made a smart screen to help blind people shop and it costs next to nothing
Thursday 15th of November 2018
Just a few years ago, Li Mengqi could not have imagined shopping on her own. Someone needed to always keep her company to say aloud what was in front of her, who’s been blind since birth.
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Is your job under threat by robots?
Thursday 15th of November 2018
Are you ready to hand your job over to R2D2?
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This Kenyan school is making water from thin air
Thursday 15th of November 2018
In this arid part of northern Kenya, water can be hard to find, particularly in the dry season.
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Electricity could be the future of medicine. Here’s why
Thursday 15th of November 2018
When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. This saying is particularly apt in medicine where doctors treat nearly every condition – from depression to hypertension – with a pill. If your doctor prescribed you anything other than a pill (assuming you don’t need surgery), you might think they were a quack. But this will soon change. Medicine is getting radical, and one of the radical new approaches for treating disease is electricity.
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Class, social mobility and its impact on our health
Thursday 15th of November 2018
Social mobility is seen as an essential societal goal – one that occupies most democratic governments. But moving up and down the social ladder can be very stressful, and it is well documented that long-lasting or repeated stress is bad for your health. Until now, though, no one has tried to quantify the health impact of social mobility. In our latest study we set out to redress this knowledge gap. But, before we get to that, a bit of background.
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This is the impact of the 2008 crisis you might not have expected
Thursday 15th of November 2018
The global financial crisis a decade ago and the resulting recession left long-lasting scars on future growth in more ways than one.
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It ended in 1767, but this experiment is still linked to higher incomes and education levels
Thursday 15th of November 2018
Investments in roads and cities can shape an economy for hundreds of years. Now economists are showing how one-time investments in education can endure every bit as long.
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This AI outperformed 20 corporate lawyers at legal work
Thursday 15th of November 2018
Technology is revolutionizing the work we do and how we do it. Increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI) and robots are taking over menial and repetitive tasks, leaving humans to concentrate on work that requires critical thinking. But as machines become better at imitating human intelligence, they’re beginning to do more and more thinking for us.
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Why are wildfires getting worse?
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
California is currently in the grips of its deadliest wildfire while two others rage, in what has been its worst wildfire year on record. The Camp wildfire in the north of the US state has burned through more than 50,000 hectares and is the most deadly in California’s history. The Camp fire has achieved the grim milestone of breaking an 85 year-old record, having already surpassed the 31 deaths recorded in the 1933 Griffith Park wildfire. California’s deadliest wildfires
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Want to engage teenagers in politics? How about blogging
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
When it comes to being politically active, young people typically have a bad reputation. In democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom, young voters tend to have have low turnout rates – but there are early signs that this is changing.
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Greater Paris is going to ban old diesel cars from next summer
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
The Greater Paris region will become a low-emission zone from next summer, which will limit the circulation of old diesel cars, the regional authority decided on Monday.
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These 5 projects are using big data to solve some of the world’s biggest problems
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
Data science has boomed over the past decade, following advances in mathematics, computing capability, and data storage. Australia’s Industry 4.0 taskforce is busy exploring ways to improve the Australian economy with tools such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data analytics. But while data science offers the potential to solve complex problems and drive innovation, it has often come under fire for unethical use of data or unintended negative consequences – particularly in commercial cases where people become data points in annual company reports. We argue that the data science boom shouldn’t be limited to business insights and profit margins. When used ethically, big data can help solve some of society’s most difficult social and environmental problems. Industry 4.0 should be underwritten by values that ensure these technologies are trained towards the social good (known as Society 4.0). That means using data ethically, involving citizens in the process, and building social values into the design. Here are a five data science projects that are putting these principles into practice. 1. Finding humanitarian hot spots
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This is Stan Lee’s billion-dollar legacy
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
Stan Lee, the legendary comic book writer and former editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, has passed away. Born in 1922, Lee was involved in the creation of some of the most iconic comic characters in the world, including Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man and Hulk. Lee eventually became the figurehead of Marvel, known and beloved by comic book fans around the world. “Stan Lee was as extraordinary as the characters he created. A super hero in his own right to Marvel fans around the world, Stan had the power to inspire, to entertain, and to connect,” Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company said in a statement on Monday. Disney had acquired Marvel Entertainment for $4.24 billion in 2009 – a price largely based on the value of characters conceived by Lee decades earlier. Despite the decade-spanning popularity of Marvel Comics, it wasn’t until the 21st century that Lee’s work really became a money-making machine. The success of the first live-action Spider-Man movie in 2002 kicked off a comic book movie craze, creating billions of dollars in box office revenue across the globe. The following chart ranks characters/franchises (co-)created by Stan Lee in terms of their success at the box office.
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Here’s how a mind control video game could help people with mental health disorders
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
Munich-based company, brainboost, has developed a way of treating people with various disorders using neurofeedback videogames.
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This ‘personality test’ is used by big companies and armies. So what’s behind it?
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has been widely used by businesses, universities, the military and other organizations for decades to assess personality. But there is very little, if any, science behind it. Merve Emre, associate professor of English at the University of Oxford and fellow at Worcester College, delves into the story behind the test with her new book, The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Training. Developed by a mother-daughter team with no psychological training, the Myers-Briggs test is supposed to indicate how people perceive and process the world around them. Emre recently joined the [email protected] radio show on SiriusXM to explain why Myers-Briggs continues to captivate our collective imagination as part of the $2 billion personality testing industry.
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These US cities are copying the Dutch approach to stopping flooding
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
Cities along the coast have typically relied on sea walls to keep the ocean out. These concrete and steel embankments mitigate flooding when storms whip the waters onto land, and they currently protect the residents of countless ocean-adjacent towns.
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These are the three traits Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella looks for in a leader
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
When Satya Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 at the age of 25, the future CEO, an engineer by training, did not yet hold a business degree. He would complete his MBA at the University of Chicago five years later, without taking time off from his full-time job. Every Friday night, Nadella would board a plane from Seattle to Chicago, and return by Monday morning.
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What’s consciousness? Here’s a new theory
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
Why is my awareness here, while yours is over there? Why is the universe split in two for each of us, into a subject and an infinity of objects? How is each of us our own center of experience, receiving information about the rest of the world out there? Why are some things conscious and others apparently not? Is a rat conscious? A gnat? A bacterium?
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Europe’s poor investment in digital is threatening prosperity. Here’s what its start-ups need
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
Europe is one of the biggest economic regions in the world. The European Union’s impressive $17 trillion GDP in 2017 was second only to the US’ $19 trillion, and ahead of China’s $12 trillion. Europe is well-known for its industrial assets, knowledge and infrastructure. It has leveraged these to its advantage over the past 30 years, while globalization has been the dominant driver of growth. However, its position is increasingly under threat now that digitization is the primary driver for economic prosperity and overall growth.
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3 lessons from India in creating equal access to vaccines
Wednesday 14th of November 2018
When I completed my medical degree in South Africa in 1981, the country had one of the highest burdens of infectious disease in the world. Nine percent of children died before their fifth birthday. As a newly minted doctor, I had the knowledge and skills to treat some of these illnesses, but it was devastating that I couldn’t do more to prevent them.
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Finland has giant supermarkets that only stock second-hand goods
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
Would you shop in a second-hand supermarket?
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Stopping antimicrobial resistance would cost just $2 per person a year
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
Simple measures such as handwashing and preventing the misuse of antibiotics could make a huge difference in the fight against antimicrobial resistance, saving millions of lives.
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Here’s how Stan Lee influenced modern culture
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
Moviegoers know Stan Lee as the zany old guy who’s had a cameo in each of the Marvel movies. Fans are probably aware that as a comic-book writer and editor, Lee was the guiding force behind the creation of the Marvel universe.
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China will be the world’s top tourist destination by 2030
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
Forget the Loire Valley and Eiffel Tower – by 2030, the Yellow Mountains and Shanghai Tower will be topping global travel bucket lists as China leapfrogs France to become the world’s top tourist destination.
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These patients are sharing their data to improve healthcare standards
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
We’ve all heard about donating blood, but how about donating data?
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Could AI make doctors obsolete?
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
No, says Vanessa Rampton, because health and disease are strongly influenced by emotional, subjective and social factors that for machines are difficult to access.
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This 13-year-old scientist has invented a better way to treat pancreatic cancer
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
Following is a transcript of the video.
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Researchers have succeeded in creating a fifth state of matter in space
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
In 1995, researchers were able to prove that a fifth state of matter — the Bose-Einstein condensate — could be created at very low temperatures. Until recently, this state of aggregation could only be generated using high-vacuum apparatus on Earth and was the state was extremely short-lived due to gravity. However, a German research team has now succeeded in generating and studying the Bose-Einstein condensate using an unmanned space rocket.
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There’s been a ‘huge and significant decline’ in FGM in African children. But that doesn’t tell the whole story
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
Female genital mutilation has dropped drastically among African children this century, research shows, but campaigners said on Wednesday that teenagers and young women remained at risk of the harmful practice.
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This is the new great debate on climate change
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
The debate over climate change is no longer about what causes global warming. Rather, the issue for policymakers is how to ensure that billions of at-risk people and businesses around the world can rapidly adapt and ensure that their communities are as resilient as possible.
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How our definition of freedom has changed
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
When people talk about freedom and democracy, they often trace the lineage of both back 2,000 years to the rocky shores of Greece or to the Senate of Rome. However, the freedom they had in the ancient world was a bit different than what we have today, with significant benefits for us.
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Miami has transformed the area under a railway into a 10-mile long park
Tuesday 13th of November 2018
When Meg Daly broke both her arms in an accident four years ago, she put her car keys away and started using the Miami Metrorail. She quickly noticed how much space was not being utilized under the elevated train tracks and from there an idea was born. Daly founded Friends of The Underline with the goal to reinvent the 10-mile unoccupied space under the Miami Metrorail from Brickell to Dadeland into a linear park, world class urban trail, and living art destination the local community can enjoy.