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2. Gender Gaps in Education: The Long View
- Author:
- David Evans, Maryam Akmal, and Pamela Jakiela
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Many countries remain far from achieving gender equality in the classroom. Using data from 126 countries between 1960 and 2010, we document four facts. First, women are more educated today than fifty years ago in every country in the world. Second, they remain less educated than men in the vast majority of countries. Third, in many countries with low levels of education for both men and women in 1960, gender gaps widened as more boys went to school, then narrowed as girls enrolled; thus, gender gaps got worse before they got better. Fourth, gender gaps rarely persist in countries where boys are attaining high levels of education. Most countries with large, current gender gaps have low levels of male educational attainment. Many also perform poorly on other measures of development such as life expectancy and GDP per capita. Improving girls’ education is an important goal in its own right, but closing gender gaps in education will not be sufficient to close critical gaps in adult life outcomes.
- Topic:
- Education, Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Inequality, Feminism, and Equality
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3. From Principles to Practice: Strengthening Accountability for Gender Equality in International Development
- Author:
- Megan O'Donnell
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Existing accountability mechanisms focused on global gender equality are largely retrospective in nature. Where mechanisms do probe at governments’ commitments to future progress, they often lack accompanying incentive structures (“carrots and sticks”) to encourage ambition. Countries re- port their progress implementing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Beijing Platform for Action, participate in annual Commission on the Status of Women sessions, and touch on gender equality as part of voluntary national review reporting for the Sustainable Development Goals. Although these processes, among others, provide an opportu- nity for country reflection and for civil society engagement, they do not mandate that governments establish and adhere to forward-looking, specific commitments detailing how they aim to promote gender equality. The absence of future commitments makes it difficult for civil society actors to hold governments to account according to well-defined metrics. At the same time, governments and women’s rights advo- cates worldwide are increasingly discussing and adopting “feminist foreign policies” and “gender-re- sponsive budgeting.” There is a need to clearly define with robust and transparent metrics what these terms mean and how to hold countries who claim to be “feminist” and “gender-responsive” account- able for ambitious progress, while also encouraging other countries to increasingly prioritize gender equality.
- Topic:
- Development, Gender Issues, Inequality, Feminism, and Equality
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
4. Gendered Language
- Author:
- Pamela Jakiela and Owen Ozier
- Publication Date:
- 01-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Languages use different systems for classifying nouns. Gender languages assign nouns to distinct sex-based categories, masculine and feminine. We construct a new data set, documenting the presence or absence of grammatical gender in more than 4,000 languages which together account for more than 99 percent of the world’s population. We find a robust negative cross-country relationship between prevalence of gender languages and women’s labor force participation and educational attainment. We replicate these associations in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in India, showing that educational attainment and female labor force participation are lower among those whose native languages use grammatical gender.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Language, Masculinity, and Femininity
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
5. Women and the Future of Work: Fix the Present
- Author:
- Charles Kenny
- Publication Date:
- 02-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- There is a lot we don’t know about what automation will mean for jobs in the future, including its impact (if any) on gender inequality. This note reviews evidence and forecasts on that question and makes four main points: Past automation has been (broadly) positive for women’s average quality of life, economic empowerment, and equality. Forecasts of the gendered impact of automation and AI going forward based on the current distribution of employment suggest considerable uncertainty and a gender inequality of impact that is marginal compared to the potential impact overall. The bigger risk—and/or opportunity—is likely to be in the combined impact of automation, policy, and social norms in changing the type of work that is seen as male or female. Minimizing any potential aggravating impact of automation and AI on inequalities in economic power in the future can best be achieved by maximizing economic equality today.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Employment, Inequality, and Feminism
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
6. After 2020: What’s Next for Global Access to Family Planning
- Author:
- Felice Apter, Amanda Glassman, and Janeen Madam Keller
- Publication Date:
- 05-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Next week, Women Deliver—the world’s largest conference on gender equality and the health, rights, and wellbeing of women and girls—will kick off. At just around 200 days before the calendar turns to 2020, this conference is an opportunity for the family planning (FP) community—including the FP2020 Core Partners (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, DFID, UNFPA, and USAID) and Reference Group—to review lessons from the past eight years and look forward beyond 2020, the landmark that has long dominated FP discussions. The key question: In a rapidly changing context, how can the FP community sustain gains and realize the benefits of high-quality FP access in low- and middle-income countries, including lower maternal mortality, better newborn and child health, and increased women’s empowerment?[1] This note highlights three issues for the global FP movement post-2020, building on CGD’s engagement in this space, including our working group on alignment in family planning.[2] We review the underlying critical assumptions in FP2020’s initial design along with their strengths and weaknesses, and place future approaches squarely within the context of today’s evolving landscape—one that looks very different than the year 2012, when FP2020 was launched.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Feminism, Family Planning, and Sex Education
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
7. Removing Barriers and Closing Gaps: Improving Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for Rohingya Refugees and Host Communities
- Author:
- Liesl Schnabel and Cindy Huang
- Publication Date:
- 06-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- In August 2017, widespread violence carried out with “genocidal intent” in Myanmar forced 745,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh and settle in camps in Cox’s Bazar.[1] Fifty-two percent of the refugee population there are women and girls.[2] Those of reproductive age are in dire need of emergency and longer-term sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)[3] services. Many have additional needs related to sexual trauma experienced in Myanmar and/or in Bangladesh.[4],[5] For many, these needs are not being fully met due to implementation and access barriers.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Health, Women, Reproductive Rights, and Sexual Health
- Political Geography:
- Asia and Myanmar
8. Unequal Ventures: Results from an Endline Study of Gender and Entrepreneurship in East Java, Indonesia
- Author:
- Mayra Buvinic, Erika Deserranno, Hillary C. Johnson, James C. Knowles, Gianmarco Leon, and Firman Witoelar
- Publication Date:
- 07-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- This report presents the endline results of a randomized controlled trial in East Java, Indonesia, of demand- and supply-side interventions to increase the use of saving and other branchless banking services by women business owners.
- Topic:
- Development, Gender Issues, Women, Entrepreneurship, Business, Demand, Supply, Banking, and Business Management
- Political Geography:
- Indonesia and Asia
9. Gender Equality in US Think Tank Leadership: Data from Tax Records
- Author:
- Charles Kenny and Julian Duggan
- Publication Date:
- 11-2019
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Existing analysis of US think tanks suggests that women are underrepresented among senior staff, lead- ership, and board members. Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Soraya Kamali-Nafar at Women In Interna- tional Security examined 22 Washington, DC-based think tanks working on foreign policy and national and international security, and they found that 68 percent of the heads of the think tanks were men, along with 73 percent of the experts and 78 percent of those on governing boards. In 2018, a random sampling of 10 leading US think tanks working on development by Charles Kenny and Tanvi Jaluka sug- gested that women made up 30 percent of high-paid employees and 10 percent of highest-paid employ- ees, and that higher-paid women earned only 75 percent that of higher-paid men. This note updates the 2018 analysis with a larger sample of think tanks covering a longer period and includes measures of think tank reach to examine if more established think tanks perform better or worse on gender equality within their senior ranks. Across the 71 think tanks for which we have data, we find that the average share of trustees and directors that were women was 23 percent, the average share of highly compensated employees that were women was 30 percent, and highly compensat- ed women were paid 92 percent of what highly compensated men were paid. Conservative-leaning think tanks performed notably worse than the average on the share of high-paid employees who were women, as did think tanks that worked on global development. Older think tanks saw worse gender pay ratios. Having a woman as CEO was not associated with greater pay equality. Analysis of the gen- der pay ratio suggest that it may be driven in part by a few very highly compensated men in senior positions, but also that, conditional on job title and think tank of employment, highly paid women are paid $30,000 less per year than highly paid men.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Leadership, Feminism, and Equality
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America
10. Do Age-of-Marriage Laws Work? Evidence from a Large Sample of Developing Countries
- Author:
- Matt Collin and Theodore Talbot
- Publication Date:
- 06-2017
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Child marriage is associated with bad outcomes for women and girls. Although many countries have raised the legal age of marriage to deter this practice, the incidence of early marriage remains stubbornly high. We develop a simple model to explain how enforcing minimum age-of-marriage laws creates differences in the share of women getting married at the legal cut-off. We formally test for these discontinuities using multiple rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in over 60 countries by applying statistical tests derived from the regression discontinuity literature. By this measure, most countries are not enforcing the laws on their books and enforcement is not getting better over time. Separately, we demonstrate that various measures of age-of-marriage discontinuities are systematically related to with existing, widely-accepted measures of rule-of-law and government effectiveness. A key contribution is therefore a simple, tractable way to monitor legal enforcement using survey data. We conclude by arguing that better laws must be accompanied by better enforcement and monitoring in to delay marriage and protect the rights of women and girls.
- Topic:
- Development and Gender Issues
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
11. Gender Matters in Economic Empowerment Interventions: A Research Review
- Author:
- Mayra Buvinic and Megan O'Donnell
- Publication Date:
- 05-2017
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- A review of the recent evaluation evidence on financial services and training interventions questions their gender neutrality and suggests that some design features in these interventions can yield more positive economic outcomes for women than for men. These include features in savings and ‘Graduation’ programs that increase women’s economic self-reliance and self-control, and the practice of repeated micro borrowing that increases financial risk-taking and choice. ‘Smart’ design also includes high quality business management and jobs skills training, and stipends and other incentives in these training programs that address women’s additional time burdens and childcare demands. Peer support may also help to increase financial risk taking and confidence in business decisions, and may augment an otherwise negligible impact of financial literacy training. These features help women overcome gender-related constraints. However, when social norms are too restrictive, and women are prevented from doing any paid work, no design will be smart enough. Subjective economic empowerment appears to be an important intermediate outcome for women that should be promoted and more reliably and accurately measured. More research is also needed on de-biasing service provision, which can be gender biased; lastly, whenever possible, results should be sex-disaggregated and reported for individuals as well as households.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, International Trade and Finance, and Global Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
12. Gender Laws, Values, and Outcomes: Evidence from the World Values Survey
- Author:
- Charles Kenny and Dev Patel
- Publication Date:
- 04-2017
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- This paper analyzes six waves of responses from the World Values Survey to understand the determinants of beliefs about women’s roles in society and their relationship with the legal system and outcomes. Using survey data for 300,000 individuals, we find that characteristics of an individual’s home country only explain about a fifth of the variation in values, and a single individual can report strongly different norms about women’s equality across different domains. There is a strong correlation between norms, laws and female labor force participation and between norms and the proportion of legislators who are women—but not between norms and relative female tertiary education. There is some suggestive evidence that laws may be more significant than norms in determining female employment outcomes, but the available evidence does not allow for strong causal statements at the cross-country level.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues and International Development
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
13. Revisiting What Works: Women, Economic Empowerment and Smart Design
- Author:
- Mayra Buvinic and Megan O’Donnell
- Publication Date:
- 11-2016
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Expanding women’s economic opportunities bene ts both women and society. Women’s choices widen and societies gain from the contribution that women’s income makes to economic growth and family wellbeing. These bene ts are increasingly well-understood, but much less is known regarding the most effective interventions to empower women economically. The call to nd out what works is long overdue. Gender gaps in economic performance are pervasive and persistent — women earn less than men across countries and occupations, and gender gaps are especially salient in poor countries. A wide range of policies and programs — from long-term investments in health and education to short-term training programs and ‘just-in-time’ information on markets — can potentially help close these gender gaps and bolster women’s economic advancement.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, International Affairs, and International Development
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
14. Incentives for Life: Cash-on-Delivery Aid for Tobacco Control in Developing Countries
- Author:
- Amanda Glassman and Thomas J. Bollyky
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Fewer people are smoking in the United States, Europe, and most of the developing world. Excise taxes, bans on smoking in public places, and graphic health warnings are achieving such dramatic reductions in tobacco use in developed countries that a recent Citigroup Bank investment analysis speculated that smoking could virtually disappear in wealthy countries over the next thirty to fifty years.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Gender Issues, International Trade and Finance, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
15. Focus UNFPA: Four Recommendations for Action
- Author:
- Katie Stein
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- With a new executive director appointed in November 2010, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is in a position to re-assert its role and lead the world's effort toward landmark achievements in improving women's health and well-being. The Fund's performance will literally be a matter of life or death for millions of women and children. The numbers speak for themselves: an estimated 215 million women lack access to modern contraceptives, and there are approximately 350,000 maternal deaths each year. As the lead agency for the United Nations' work on population and reproductive health, UNFPA can reduce this terrible and unnecessary toll of lost lives.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Development, Gender Issues, Health, and United Nations
16. The Economics of Population Policy for Carbon Emissions Reduction in Developing Countries
- Author:
- David Wheeler and Dan Hammer
- Publication Date:
- 11-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Female education and family planning are both critical for sustainable development, and they obviously merit expanded support without any appeal to global climate considerations. However, even relatively optimistic projections suggest that family planning and female education will suffer from financing deficits that will leave millions of women unserved in the coming decades. Since both activities affect fertility, population growth, and carbon emissions, they may also provide sufficient climate-related benefits to warrant additional financing from resources devoted to carbon emissions abatement. This paper considers the economic case for such support. Using recent data on emissions, program effectiveness and program costs, we estimate the cost of carbon emissions abatement via family planning and female education. We compare our estimates with the costs of numerous technical abatement options that have been estimated by Nauclér and Enkvist in a major study for McKinsey and Company (2009). We find that the population policy options are much less costly than almost all of the options Nauclér and Enkvist provide for low-carbon energy development, including solar, wind, and nuclear power, second-generation biofuels, and carbon capture and storage. They are also cost-competitive with forest conservation and other improvements in forestry and agricultural practices. We conclude that female education and family planning should be viewed as viable potential candidates for financial support from global climate funds. The case for female education is also strengthened by its documented contribution to resilience in the face of the climate change that has already become inevitable.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Climate Change, Development, Gender Issues, and Third World
- Political Geography:
- Africa
17. Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health
- Author:
- Miriam Temin
- Publication Date:
- 08-2010
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Improving adolescent girls' health and wellbeing is critical to achieving virtually all international development goals, from reducing infant and child deaths to stimulating economic growth and encouraging environmental sustainability. Governments and donors seem to recognize this, but they have yet to take the specific actions needed to genuinely invest in adolescent girls' health and, thereby, the health and wellbeing of generations to come.
- Topic:
- Development, Gender Issues, Health, Human Rights, and Border Control
- Political Geography:
- Africa and China
18. Going Beyond Gender as Usual: Why and How Global HIV/AIDS Donors Can Do More for Women and Girls
- Author:
- David Wendt, Nandini Oomman, and Christina Droggitis
- Publication Date:
- 08-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Few people doubt that gender inequality influences the spread of HIV/AIDS. Yet public health efforts tend to focus on changing individual behavior rather than addressing structural factors—social, economic, physical and political—that influence the spread and effects of HIV and AIDS.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Health, and Social Stratification
19. Inexcusable Absence: Why 60 Million Girls Still Aren't in School and What to do About It
- Author:
- Marlaine Lockheed and Maureen Lewis
- Publication Date:
- 04-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The images of girls returning to school in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban drew attention to the lack of educational opportunities for girls all too common in many developing countries. Girls' education is indisputably crucial to development, and the development community has worked hard to get more of them into school. The result: since 1960, there have been remarkable increases in primary school enrollment rates for both boys and girls in developing countries. In most countries, girls' participation has converged with that of boys, bringing gender equity to the educational systems of many poor countries. But the international community has largely overlooked a key issue: that out of the remaining 60 million girls ages 6-11 still not in school, 70 percent belong to socially excluded groups.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Education, Gender Issues, and Humanitarian Aid
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Taliban
20. Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines
- Author:
- Dean Karlan, Wesley Yin, and Nava Ashraf
- Publication Date:
- 01-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Female “empowerment” has increasingly become a policy goal, both as an end to itself and as a means to achieving other development goals. Microfinance in particular has often been argued, but not without controversy, to be a tool for empowering women. Here, using a randomized controlled trial, we examine whether access to an individually-held commitment savings product leads to an increase in female decision-making power within the household. We find positive impacts, particularly for women who have below median decision-making power in the baseline, and we find this leads to a shift towards female-oriented durables goods purchased in the household.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Gender Issues
- Political Geography:
- Southeast Asia