Blogs and Opinion
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This survivor gave a powerful message about sexual violence at Davos 2022
Wednesday 25th of May 2022
A survivor of sexual violence in war has given a powerful message to Davos about its impact – and called for greater global action to tackle it and to help survivors.
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Care economy: an opportunity to create jobs and close the gender gap
Wednesday 25th of May 2022
During the last two years, experts have gauged the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on various productive industries of the global economy. But the care economy, a sector profoundly affected by lockdowns, did not receive enough attention from experts.
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Why women’s rights must be at the heart of crisis response
Tuesday 24th of May 2022
From women giving birth in bomb shelters to maternity hospitals under siege and pregnant women being forced to flee, harrowing images from Ukraine illustrate the vulnerabilities of women caught in conflict.
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In Latin America, public-private partnerships support a gender-inclusive recovery
Monday 23rd of May 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has set back progress to close gender gaps in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) by a decade. According to the 2021 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report it will now take 69 years to close gender gaps in the region. Effective public-private collaboration can help reverse these negative trends.
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The motherhood penalty: How childcare and paternity leave can reduce the gender pay gap
Thursday 19th of May 2022
When Joeli Brearley was four months’ pregnant, she was brushing her teeth one morning and missed a call from her company.
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The myth of flexibility for women in the workplace
Monday 16th of May 2022
Since the pandemic, many employers and employees have come to value greater flexibility in working arrangements. Flexibility is often framed as a women’s issue: when the insurance firm Zurich included the words “part-time”, “job-share” and “flexible working” in its job adverts, for example, the number of women applying for management roles increased by nearly 20%.
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There are reasons girls don’t study physics – and they don’t include not liking maths
Friday 13th of May 2022
“From my own knowledge of these things, physics is not something that girls tend to fancy. They don’t want to do it … There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think that they would rather not do,” Katharine Birbalsingh, chair of the UK government’s Social Mobility Commission and a secondary school head teacher, told the Commons Science and Technology Committee on April 27 2022.
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The book character gender gap: AI finds more men in fiction than women
Friday 13th of May 2022
“Reader, I married him.” So says Jane Eyre, the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s classic 1847 romance – a line so famous because of the hurdles she must jump to get to that point.
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This bus network in Pakistan is empowering women. Here’s how
Thursday 12th of May 2022
Pakistani student Mah Jabeen credits a new public bus system in her home city with saving her from being stuck at her parents’ house doing chores – or even having to get married.
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Six misunderstood concepts about diversity in the workplace and why they matter
Monday 9th of May 2022
Diversity and inclusion in the workplace is a sensitive topic. People are afraid to get things wrong or to use the wrong word. It doesn’t help that the words involved are confusing.
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Here’s why hybrid working means more stress for women
Friday 6th of May 2022
Burnout and stress for women at work have reached “alarming levels”, a new report warns. Women @ Work 2022: A Global Outlook is a survey of 5,000 working women across 10 countries by professional services firm Deloitte Global.
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Gender gap persists at all levels of leadership in US universities, report finds
Tuesday 3rd of May 2022
Only 22 percent of the leadership positions of America’s top research universities are filled by women, according to a new report by the Eos Foundation. The situation for women of color is even more dismal, at only 5 percent. These numbers are even more striking when taking into account the academic success of women, who achieved more Bachelor’s degrees for the last 40 years, more Master’s degrees for the last 35, and more Doctoral’s for the last 15 in the U.S. than men.
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Stocks on Mars and savings accounts on Venus? How to accelerate female economic empowerment
Friday 29th of April 2022
This article was originally published by the Atlantic Council. This version has been shortened.
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Here’s how transport apps have highlighted the gender imbalance in the transport sector
Friday 29th of April 2022
The UK’s roads are some of the main culprits of its greenhouse gas emissions. And in 2020, 92% of passenger kilometres travelled in the UK was made by cars, vans and taxis. That means getting around by private vehicle has a disproportionately large negative impact on the environment.
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The key skills needed to build diversity, equality, inclusion and belonging in the workplace
Wednesday 20th of April 2022
As organizations explore ways to become more diverse and inclusive, what skills might help them be more successful?
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Transport has a gender bias problem. This is what needs to change
Wednesday 6th of April 2022
Evidence from both developed and developing countries is showing that men and women have different patterns in traveling and accessing public spaces.
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3 women in AI who are helping bridge the gender equity gap
Wednesday 6th of April 2022
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly advancing across sectors and industries and while it has great potential to benefit society, this can only be realized if AI truly represents the diversity of the populations it represents.
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This is how female representation is rising across the film industry
Thursday 31st of March 2022
Even though the MeToo movement sensitized a large audience to the lopsided power dynamics between the genders in Hollywood, the lack of representation of women in behind-the-scenes roles is not often cast into the limelight. As data from the Celluloid Ceiling study sponsored by San Diego State University shows, the percentage of women working as directors, writers, editors, producers and cinematographers on the 250 highest-grossing U.S. movies is only rising slowly. Still, only 25 percent of those roles were filled by women in 2021.
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Meet the women entrepreneurs who are breaking down ‘glass walls’
Friday 25th of March 2022
The unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is undeniable: Women have been affected disproportionately, as they dropped out of paid employment at higher rates than men, taking on responsibilities for the care of children and the ill. Multiple crises from conflict to climate change are exacerbating the challenge, hitting developing economies particularly hard.
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A lack of female scientists means fewer medical treatments for women
Thursday 24th of March 2022
Women scientists are more likely to develop treatments for women, but many of their ideas never become inventions, research by Rembrand Koning says. What would it take to make innovation more equitable?
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Q&A: ‘So many things’ encumber women
Wednesday 23rd of March 2022
Societies expect men to achieve, but women need support to overcome systemic barriers, says the first female vice-chancellor at the University of Ghana.
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Universities show that remote work could be damaging for women
Friday 18th of March 2022
If one possibly positive thing came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the impetus it gave to letting people work from home.
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Female labour-force participation in the US has stalled. Is anywhere doing better?
Friday 18th of March 2022
Over the course of the past three decades, female labor force participation has progressed in many places, but remains behind the rates for male participation in the labor market. In the U.S., the growth of female labor force participation stalled, while South Korea is still showing extreme gaps between male and female participation despite past gains.
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Why putting women in charge of their own financial security pays dividends
Friday 11th of March 2022
Women are 17% more likely to be killed than men in a car accident, and a gender biased design process is to blame.
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3 steps to tackling the global gender gap
Friday 11th of March 2022
A wide array of evidence documents the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women compared to men, threatening reversals in many of the gains made in gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in recent decades. These impacts range from job and income losses to impacts on mental health and increasing gender-based violence. Women-led businesses were more likely to experience a decline in sales and profits during the pandemic and were more likely to close than those owned by men. Relatedly, women entrepreneurs took on more unpaid care than their male counterparts as schools closed and family members fell ill. Even before the pandemic, women lagged men in financial inclusion, and women were over-represented in the informal sector in low-income countries and had greater interruptions work experience.
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For women to advance at work, we need to break the mould
Friday 11th of March 2022
The pandemic threw into question like never before the idea that the world is making progress towards gender equality. Women were hit harder on every level, their livelihoods disproportionately impacted, and their caring responsibilities multiplied. Instead of corporations resuming business as usual in the wake of COVID, they should recognise that there are invaluable lessons that must be learnt from the last two years.
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How has the number of female CEOs in Fortune 500 companies changed over the last 20 years?
Thursday 10th of March 2022
2022 is seeing a new record of female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies. As of March, there were 74 female CEOs employed at America’s 500 highest-grossing companies, up from 41 in June of 2021 and only 7 in 2002. Yet, the new high still only translates to around 15 percent female representation at the top of the country’s biggest public businesses. Calls for more equitable hiring seem to be slowly bearing fruit in the higher echelons of the business world, as the number of female CEOs has risen for the fourth year in a row.
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There are over 1,000 global banknotes – this is how many feature women
Thursday 10th of March 2022
A study by Swedish loan company Advisa analyzed 1,006 current international banknotes and found that only 15% featured images of women.
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What is women’s ‘bodily autonomy’ and why does it matter for everyone?
Thursday 10th of March 2022
A relatively recent study traced the success and failure of European regions between the 16th and 19th centuries, and identified something that may have already been obvious to at least one in about every two people.
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This tech activist is on a mission to teach 1 million girls to code
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
Lady Mariéme Jamme, the award-winning technologist and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, is the founder of iamtheCODE.org, which aims to get 1 million girls coding by 2030. It is the first African-led initiative to advance girls’ education in the STEAMD (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics and design) subjects through collaboration with governments and the public and private sectors.
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How ‘seeing ourselves’ on screen or on the page can effect cultural change
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
The media and entertainment industry has a strong influence on society and the power to shape worldviews. Articulating precisely where and how that power and influence manifests can be a challenge, however. This is particularly true for issues around representation and, more specifically, how audiences feel – and what they care about – when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in the content they consume.
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Achieving gender equality: Meet the women making history in 2022
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
Role models are recognized as crucial to helping the world overcome gender bias. If women can see themselves represented, this helps achieve gender equality.
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6 surprising facts about the global gender pay gap
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
Women globally earn around 37% less than men in similar roles, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2021 from the World Economic Forum.
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How to end unconscious gender bias? An author explains
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
When Jessica Nordell was starting out as a journalist, she ran a little experiment. She created a new email address and signed off using just her initials, JD Nordell.
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Want to improve gender equality in universities? Start by closing the policy gap: Report
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
Gender equality has come a long way since International Women’s Day was founded 111 years ago. And in many ways, universities have been a positive force in this journey.
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International Women’s Day: 2 experts say flexibility for everyone would make workplaces more equal
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
Developing and deploying one-half of the world’s available talent has a huge bearing on the growth, competitiveness and future-readiness of economies and businesses worldwide.
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How are female leaders tackling workplace bias?
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
Women have made considerable strides in the labour force over the past few decades. They are working more hours, pursuing higher education in greater numbers, while also holding more prominent positions than before.
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‘No exceptions, no exclusions, no excuses’ – 6 industry experts make the case for women’s health
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
Women and girls are powerful actors of change for sustainable development. The pandemic exposed sharp economic and social inequalities and widened the already-existing gender gap for the most vulnerable by 36 years.
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How can we make workplace priorities more effective and meaningful?
Monday 7th of March 2022
The pandemic revealed that for too long, too many women have lived their lives on a tightrope, balancing multiple, conflicting demands, says Stanford scholar Adina Sterling.
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Paternity leave increases life satisfaction for women – new study
Monday 7th of March 2022
Earmarked paternity leave has been introduced in many countries, often with the aim of increasing mothers’ labour market participation. Multiple studies have documented limited, if any, effect, on this, especially in the long run, but the policy’s wider impact on parental wellbeing has received less attention. This column uses detailed data on life satisfaction in Europe to show that paternity leave quotas have a positive effect on both mothers’ and fathers’ wellbeing. This uplift disproportionately benefits mothers and is driven by improvements to satisfaction within the home, not the workplace.
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What is the gender gap and why is it important? Measuring progress for International Women’s Day
Friday 4th of March 2022
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” so goes the adage, often attributed to management consultant Peter Drucker.
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Q&A: Women need to take the lead in internet governance
Thursday 3rd of March 2022
Learning how to code changed Baratang Miya’s life.
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15 strategies helping to close the gender gap around the world
Thursday 3rd of March 2022
There is still a huge amount of work to do to achieve gender equality around the world.
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Women in work: how companies in Chile reduced gender pay gap
Thursday 3rd of March 2022
The World Economic Forum Gender Parity Accelerators programme has significantly improved the professional prospects of women in work in Chile. By bringing together leaders from the private and public sectors, the Forum has been influential in enhancing the quality of work for more than 130,000 local women – the equivalent of 7% of salaried employees in Chile’s private sector.
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What the US soccer equal pay case means for sports
Saturday 26th of February 2022
After six years of legal action, the US Women Soccer Players Association has recently won a settlement on discrimination and unequal pay. American soccer’s governing body agreed to pay $24 million, and made a commitment to equalize pay and bonuses to match the men’s team. The Association congratulated not only the lawyers but also the athletes themselves “on their historic success in fighting decades of discrimination”. This is a major step forward in achieving equal pay for women in sports.
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3 ways companies can promote equity at home and ease burnout
Tuesday 22nd of February 2022
Companies and managers should step up to help employees navigate a fairer division of labor at home, according to research from McKinsey.
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How can we support women’s economic empowerment through trade?
Monday 21st of February 2022
For years, Krishna Kumari Rai from the Kulung Rai community in Nepal, had to leave her home to secure her family’s livelihood. Forced to travel to Bhutan to work as a laborer in orange orchards and in Nepal’s carpet factories, making a living meant facing undue hardship as well as risks to her safety and well-being without economic security. Yet when she returned home and discovered the commercial viability of a forest product ‘allo’, which her family, had used for food and clothing for generations, an entrepreneur was born. She learned how to weave, began organizing the women in her community into groups and ultimately initiated a Common Facilitation Center. The now-1200+ member strong Center was set up as part of an NGO, SABAH Nepal where Ms. Kumari is a Director, and focuses on increasing trade opportunities for home-based workers. Products made from allo fibers are distinctive due to their indigenous heritage and hold enormous potential for large profit margins (64-106% measured between 2014-2018) in a global natural fibers market otherwise saturated by hemp and jute.
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These countries have the most female inventors
Thursday 17th of February 2022
The share of female inventors among applicants for international patents was highest in Cuba and the Philippines in 2021, according to data by the World Intellectual Property Organization. Worldwide, the share of women applicants stood at only 17 percent. Cuba, which only irregularly reports figures to Wipo, very much exceeded the global average with more than half of all registered patent applicants being women in 2021, as did the Philippines, where last year 38 percent of inventors were female.
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Being overqualified for a job impacts women and men differently
Thursday 17th of February 2022
Rejection for a job because you’re “overqualified” has a certain kind of sting.
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3 ways to advance corporate diversity, equity and inclusion
Thursday 17th of February 2022
Every February, we celebrate Black History Month in the US and Canada. It is not only a celebration of the contribution the Black community has made to our society, but also a reminder that we must constantly evaluate our progress and take more action toward racial equity. Since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the business community has been taking a hard look at where it falls short on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
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Are you ‘headstrong’ or ‘dependent’? How gender stereotypes might be affecting your wages
Wednesday 16th of February 2022
Closing the gender pay gap may prove harder than anyone thought. A new study shows that characteristics developed in childhood may lead to some young women being paid less than men for doing a comparable job.
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How can we address current gender bias in hiring?
Monday 14th of February 2022
Rejection for a job because you’re “overqualified” has a certain kind of sting.
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Women are "hardworking", men are "brilliant": Economics job market
Monday 14th of February 2022
Academia faces increased scrutiny due to gender imbalances (Valian 1999), and this is especially true of economics (Lundberg 2020). Recent empirical work has documented that the career pipeline for women is ‘leaky’, with women dropping out of the profession at critical junctures such as between earning a PhD and becoming an assistant professor, or between assistant and associate professorships (Lundberg and Stearns 2019). In a recent paper (Eberhardt, Facchini, and Rueda 2022), we study the first step in the academic career of an economist – the junior ‘job market’. This is the stage at which the ‘leak’ in the pipeline has grown the most over the past decade (Lundberg and Stearns 2019) and which so far has not received much systematic attention in the literature (Lundberg 2020).
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Gender pay gap: Why attitudes to risk could be making it worse
Sunday 13th of February 2022
Men, notoriously, outearn women in similar jobs, with multiple inequalities leaving women in Greater Boston earning 70 cents to every dollar earned by male counterparts.
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Why bringing women into tech roles is good for society
Friday 11th of February 2022
Predicting the future is a perilous business, but we are certain that technology—particularly digital ones—and sustainability will do much to shape the future. Certainly, the European Union is betting on this: most of the €724 billion ($810 billion) COVID-19 recovery package is directed at these sectors. To capture their potential, however, a third element is necessary: women.
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We need more women in tech. Could apprenticeships bridge the gap?
Friday 11th of February 2022
“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last.” When Kamala Harris spoke these words as US Vice-President elect, she continued a very welcome trend that has seen an explosion in phenomenal female role models in every walk of life. Women like Kamala are breaking glass ceilings across industries and inspiring young girls to ignore the limitations that many of us over the age of 40 would have repeatedly had reinforced throughout our childhoods.
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Study suggests link between welfare payments and enhanced brain activity in babies
Tuesday 8th of February 2022
Researchers in the United States have published a study that suggests providing financial support to the mothers of newborn babies increases brain activity in their infants.
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Why we must protect women and girls from violent practices
Monday 7th of February 2022
Female genital mutilation, also known as cutting, affects at least 200 million girls, according to the World Health Organization. It is practiced in 31 countries around the world. In some of those countries, up to 90% of girls have been subjected to the harmful practice.
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Why women’s leadership is key to climate action
Tuesday 1st of February 2022
At the COP26 climate summit, the leaders of Estonia, Tanzania and Bangladesh were the first to sign the Glasgow Women’s Leadership statement, calling for countries to support the leadership of women and girls on climate action at all levels of society and politics. Yet these three women comprised nearly a third of all female leaders at the conference, out of 140 heads of delegation.
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How are gender stereotypes affecting perceptions of STEM careers?
Friday 28th of January 2022
One factor that influences the use of the labels “soft science” or “hard science” is gender bias, according to recent research my colleagues and I conducted.