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Blogs and Opinion

  • 4 reasons why we should all make friends from different generations

    Friday 30th of September 2022

    While loneliness can strike at many points throughout our lives, there are times when it is especially acute. Big transitions like leaving university, changing jobs or moving cities can make us feel isolated and socially excluded from the people around us.

  • Gender equality by 2030? Those countries making most progress offer lessons on what to change

    Wednesday 21st of September 2022

    The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2022 projected that, at the current rate of progress, it will take 132 years to reach gender parity globally.

  • How do Americans view policy proposals on transgender and gender identity issues?

    Wednesday 21st of September 2022

    In recent years, many states have considered or enacted policies related to people who are transgender. On a couple of these measures, there is some agreement among Americans, but views of other policies are more divided, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

  • 4 ways to improve economic opportunities for women around the world

    Tuesday 13th of September 2022

    Too many women are locked out of economic opportunities, which is not only unfair but also harms growth and resilience for all. We know that in countries with greater gender inequality just closing the gap in women’s labor force participation could increase economic output by an average of 35 percent. Progress, however, is slow to come and shocks, such as health and climate disasters, social unrest, and war continue to worsen gender inequality by directly affecting women’s lives and livelihoods or keeping them out of school and work.

  • This is the value of women’s business networks – new research

    Tuesday 6th of September 2022

    Women-only professional networks have become a familiar feature of the corporate world. Set up to organise and channel female voices and experiences, some have even become big businesses themselves.

  • Why men can (and should) participate in the care economy too

    Friday 26th of August 2022

    While the COVID-19 pandemic brought the economics of care into vogue in policy circles, well-intentioned solutions dedicate only a modicum of attention toward how to equitably patch the holes in this industry. If we truly believe in the importance of gender equity and in the necessity of care infrastructure, why aren’t we formulating solutions to increase the number of men in care?

  • Why we must act now to close the gender gap in AI

    Monday 22nd of August 2022

    The last five years have seen unprecedented rates of digitalization across every sector of the economy, catalyzed by the pandemic. In 2021 alone, $93.5 billion in private investment was poured into the field, more than double the figure of 2020. Women, however, are being left behind at every step of the artificial intelligence (AI) life cycle – the technology powering the digital transformation.

  • How female-led start-ups can transform Africa

    Friday 19th of August 2022

    An African drive for gender equality and women’s empowerment has consequently given rise to women entrepreneurs and female led startups on the continent. Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, has the world’s highest rate of women involved in entrepreneurial activity at 26%. According to the MasterCard Index of Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE) 2021, Botswana, South Africa and Ghana are among the countries with the highest percentage of women entrepreneurs globally.

  • Men make 48% more than women in some sectors of the gig economy, study shows

    Monday 15th of August 2022

    Women working in the fast-growing gig economy are being paid far less than men, according to a study of freelance workers in the US.

  • From Carson Pickett to Colin Kaepernick, these activist athletes are making a change

    Thursday 11th of August 2022

    Sometimes it seems as if changing the world has become part of the job description for the world’s top athletes.

  • How does gender impact opinions about artificial intelligence?

    Wednesday 10th of August 2022

    Women in the United States are more skeptical than men about some uses of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly the possible widespread use of driverless passenger vehicles, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data collected in November 2021.

  • How women’s empowerment can drive competitiveness in the Middle East

    Friday 5th of August 2022

    It will take 115 years to close the gender gap in the Middle East and North Africa according to the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report.

  • Health and social care’s gender pay problem

    Thursday 4th of August 2022

    Women health and care workers earn almost a quarter less on average than their male colleagues, a new report finds.

  • To educate and empower women, we must close the digital divide

    Thursday 4th of August 2022

    The digital divide hurts women the most. Women disproportionately find themselves unable to access modern innovations that can improve their lives — among them digital education.

  • Space, cyberspace and climate change: the best of Radio Davos over the last year

    Thursday 4th of August 2022

    The World Economic Forum publishes a range of podcasts, and this episode of Radio Davos gives you a flavour of what to expect from:

  • England win Euro 2022: How women’s football beat the sceptics to breathe new life into the game

    Tuesday 2nd of August 2022

    England’s women have won the European football championship, bringing a major international trophy home for the first time since the men’s team won the World Cup in 1966, more than a lifetime ago for many of the fans who crowded into Wembley Stadium for the match. They beat Germany, English football’s bitterest rival by two goals to one, in a tense and hard-fought match that was not decided until the second period of extra time.

  • It’s time to close the gender gaps in taxation

    Tuesday 2nd of August 2022

    Closing gender gaps can help set countries on a sustainable path toward more diversified economies, higher levels of productivity, and better prospects for the next generation. Yet gender inequality remains a global problem, especially in low-income countries, where women and girls lag behind men and boys in access to healthcare, education, jobs, entrepreneurship, and access to finance and assets while bearing disproportionate responsibility for unpaid work and care. Gender gaps in labor market participation, entrepreneurship, and land ownership lead to significantly lower productivity, and in turn, lower economic growth.

  • This Indian project is helping women into tech

    Friday 29th of July 2022

    A programme run by software companies Microsoft and SAP in India is enabling women graduates to gain practical industry skills in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and web design and digital marketing.

  • The one thing we can’t ignore to close the gender gap at work

    Friday 29th of July 2022

    Despite the progress made toward gender equality, men and women still face different labour market conditions at all levels of employment, not least at top management positions. Even female managers successful at breaking the glass ceiling are rewarded less than their male peers. The economics literature has uncovered ample evidence of gender bias. Geiler and Renneboog (2015) find that female top managers in listed UK firms earn some 23% less than their male counterparts, while Bell (2005) documents a bias between 8% and 25% for female executives in US-listed firms, after controlling for differences in company size, occupational title, and industry. Bertrand and Hallock (2001) reveal a 45% gap in US firms, reduced to about 5% after accounting for observable differences, where gender segregation by firm size plays a crucial role.

  • 3 reasons why having female political leaders matters

    Friday 29th of July 2022

    There are currently just 30 female presidents and prime ministers worldwide. Moldova and Barbados are the only two countries where women occupy both the positions of president and prime minister, while Bangladesh is the only nation where a woman has led for more years than a man over the last half century.

  • 4 things to know about financial inclusion around the world right now

    Thursday 28th of July 2022

    Financial inclusion is so important that it features in 8 of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

  • Which generation has the most trust in brands?

    Tuesday 26th of July 2022

    Edelman has been following brand trust for the past six years. Our most important finding is the emergence of belief-driven buying, with nearly two-thirds of consumers today buying or advocating for brands based on their values. The 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: The New Cascade of Influence released today at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity finds a further trend to brand democracy in the form of gravitational force exerted by Gen Z consumers.

  • 4 industry leaders on how we can recover momentum towards closing the gender gap

    Friday 22nd of July 2022

    Since the pandemic began, headlines worldwide have depicted its disproportionate impact on women. It pushed more women out of jobs, excluded them from quality healthcare and education, pushed them to perform more childcare, and intensified gender inequalities, among others. Then came the multiple shocks in the global economy.

  • 3 ways online learning can narrow the higher education and workforce gender gap

    Wednesday 20th of July 2022

    Women were among the hardest hit during the pandemic. Many were forced out of the workforce and overall they lost more jobs than men did.

  • Search engines have a gender bias problem

    Wednesday 20th of July 2022

    Gender-neutral internet searches yield results that nonetheless produce male-dominated output, according to a new study.

  • Here’s how pay transparency affects the workplace

    Wednesday 20th of July 2022

    How would you feel if your co-workers knew exactly how much you earned?

  • How Japan can embrace gender equality and nurture a more inclusive society

    Wednesday 20th of July 2022

    Diversity is not only about being inclusive in terms of gender equality. But the inability of companies and organizations to incorporate the largest minority group, women, indicates that they are not being inclusive to other minority groups.

  • Active allyship: How can you support LGBTQ+ employees?

    Monday 18th of July 2022

    LGBTQ+ visibility has become more common in the media and across the private and public sectors in the United States in recent years. To keep up, businesses are becoming more adept at adopting inclusive-language practices and undertaking other allyship efforts to attract a more diverse workforce.

  • Occidental’s Vicki Hollub – the woman driving one of America’s top oil companies – on Meet the Leader

    Friday 15th of July 2022

    Vicki Hollub is the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, running the energy company at a critical time – during the disruption caused by the Ukraine conflict and the ongoing push for the energy transition.

  • 3 action steps to create gender and racial equity at work

    Friday 15th of July 2022

    Tina Opie was wary of Beth Livingston when they first met more than a decade ago.

  • What is the ‘pink tax’ and how does it hinder women?

    Thursday 14th of July 2022

    Men and women often buy similar day-to-day products. But research shows that consumer products targeted and advertised to women are sometimes more expensive than comparable products marketed to men. This disparity is referred to as a so-called pink tax.

  • The global gender gap in 5 charts

    Thursday 14th of July 2022

    The World Economic Forum has released its latest Global Gender Gap Report. The 2022 edition found that, at the current rate of progress, it will take 132 years to reach gender parity.

  • 6 female leaders and the lessons they’ve learned 

    Thursday 14th of July 2022

    The Forum’s Meet the Leader podcast interviews leaders from across business and wider society uncovering nuggets on leadership and life.

  • Closing the gender gap for women could help economies out of crisis. Here’s how

    Wednesday 13th of July 2022

    The current recession, unlike past economic slumps that have tended to be worse for men, is disproportionately bad for women.

  • 6 leaders on how women can thrive despite the gender gap

    Wednesday 13th of July 2022

    Gender equality remains unfinished business in every country of the world. Despite the undeniable progress that’s been made over decades of activism, women are yet to fully embody their agency, be it on the homefront, in the community, or at the workplace.

  • If we want to build truly sustainable cities, we need to think about how women use energy and space

    Wednesday 13th of July 2022

    Women and men balance their different responsibilities in different ways, something the pandemic has brought into sharp relief. But that isn’t always considered by those designing buildings. In fact, buildings designed without considering gender often benefit men and disadvantage women by default.

  • Gender equality is better for all of us, so why is it taking so long to close the ‘gender gap’? Hear the podcast: Radio Davos

    Wednesday 13th of July 2022

    Every year, the World Economic Forum publishes research on the position of women in society around the world, and calculates the ‘gender gap’ – how far opportunities for women – in the workplace, in education, in politics and business – lag behind that of men.

  • Virtual Media Briefing on the Global Gender Gap Report 2022

    Wednesday 13th of July 2022

    Much of the progress made since the inception of the Global Gender Gap Index in 2006 was drastically reversed over the pandemic. According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2022, the recovery towards gender parity has been insufficient in the face of a volatile context.

  • What the rise of female founders tells us about the state of the gender gap

    Wednesday 13th of July 2022

    As we head into a period of economic uncertainty, new data reveals the systemic challenges facing women in the global labour market. Today’s Global Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) shows that the gender gap hasn’t bounced back from the enormous damage done during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report benchmarks the evolution of gender-based gaps in four areas: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political empowerment. Scarily, pandemic disruptions and a weak recovery means it’s now going to take another 132 years to close the global gender gap.

  • Measuring wealth: a key step to effectively narrow the gender gap

    Wednesday 13th of July 2022

    Longstanding global societal and business inequities have disproportionately affected wealth accumulation for women. Despite an increased focus of business leaders on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and gender equity in particular, women worldwide are expected to have significantly lower accumulated wealth than men at retirement. According to a new global Wealth Equity Index report from WTW in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, women upon retirement are expected to have only 74% of the wealth that men have.

  • Women in work: how companies in Chile reduced gender pay gap

    Wednesday 13th of July 2022

    The Gender Parity Accelerator in Chile has significantly improved the professional prospects of women in the workforce. By bringing together leaders from the private and public sectors, the accelerator has enhanced the quality of work for more than 130,000 local women – the equivalent of 7% of salaried employees in Chile’s private sector.

  • Gender gap: These are the world’s most gender-equal countries

    Wednesday 13th of July 2022

    Iceland has once again been named the most gender equal country, topping the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2022.

  • These structural reforms can help governments address the cost of living crisis

    Thursday 7th of July 2022

    The cost of living crisis is very apparent in the latest forecasts published by the OECD (OECD 2022). The growth rate of GDP expected this year is positive for every OECD country, but the growth rate of real household disposable income is consistently lower and is negative for a majority of them (Figure 1). Moreover, the magnitude of this differential has not been experienced in some countries since at least the 1970s and is even more important given the long-standing argument that income measures based on household disposable income provide a superior measure of welfare to GDP. For example, adjusted household disposable income (AHDI) is used as an alternative income measure to GDP in the OECD flagship publication, How’s Life: Measuring Well-being, is a component of the OECD Better Life Index, and is more consistent with the recommendations of the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission on Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress to focus on household income and consumption rather than output (Stiglitz et al. 2009).

  • Women in science less likely to be credited for their work, study shows

    Wednesday 29th of June 2022

    Women in science are less likely than their male counterparts to receive authorship credit for their work, a study shows.

  • Here’s how one woman is empowering domestic abuse survivors around the world

    Thursday 23rd of June 2022

    Women and girls around the world are getting help to escape sexual violence through an innovative ethical fashion business.

  • These 10 steps can help universities tackle gender inequality

    Friday 17th of June 2022

    There is much to celebrate when it comes to universities’ progress on gender equality, but there are areas that require significant improvement, too.

  • Explainer: How gender inequality and climate change are interconnected

    Thursday 16th of June 2022

    Gender inequality coupled with the climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges of our time. It poses threats to ways of life, livelihoods, health, safety and security for women and girls around the world.

  • What are nonpromotable tasks, and why are women doing so many of them?

    Monday 13th of June 2022

    This article was originally published by McKinsey & Company, www.mckinsey.com. Copyright (c) 2021 All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

  • The unsanitary truth about period poverty – and what governments can do

    Thursday 9th of June 2022

    Millions of people around the world struggle to manage menstrual health, according to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The motherhood penalty: How childcare and paternity leave can reduce the gender pay gap

    Thursday 19th of May 2022

    This article was first published in May 2022 and updated in July 2022.

  • 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%.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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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