Moment of Lift Discussion Guide.
Evoke. A website hosted by Melinda Gates focusing on uplifting women.
Malala Fund. Working for a world where every girl can learn and lead.
United Nations Human Development Reports. Global, regional, and country/territory-level data on key dimensions of human development, including data on gender (in)equality.
UN Women. The United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide.
UN Population Fund. UNFPA is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. Our mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. Several topics under What We Do relate to The Moment of Lift.
UN Sustainable Development Goals: Goal 5: Achieve Gender Equality and Empower all Women and Girls. Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.
CARE. Women are a vital part of CARE's community-based efforts to improve basic education, increase access to quality healthcare, and expand economic opportunity for all.
Save the Children. Founded over 100 years ago, Save the Children was the first global organization devoted solely to serving children’s needs and securing their rights.
Family Planning 2030 (FP2030). A continuation of FP2020, FP2030 is the a global partnership centered solely on family planning. This singular focus allows for bringing together the widest possible range of partners across disciplines and sectors, while situating family planning at the crossroads of the global health, development, and gender equality agendas.
Girls, Not Brides. A global network of more than 1,600 civil society organisations from over 100 countries committed to ending child marriage and ensuring girls can reach their full potential.
Kakenya's Dream. Leverages girls' education to empower girls and transform rural communities.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For 20 years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been committed to fighting the greatest inequities in the world.
This study shows empirically that gender inequality and income inequality are strongly interlinked, even after controlling for standard drivers of income inequality. The study analyzes gender inequality by using and extending the United Nation's Gender Inequality Index (GII) to cover two decades for almost 140 countries. The main finding is that an increase in the GII from perfect gender equality to perfect inequality is associated with an almost 10 points higher net Gini coefficient. For advanced countries, with higher gender equity in opportunities, income inequality arises mainly through gender gaps in economic participation. For emerging market and developing countries, inequality of opportunity, in particular in education and health, appear to pose larger obstacles to income equality. Online.
This paper assesses the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on gender development and gender inequality. In fact, FDI through increased labor demand, technological spillovers but mostly through corporate social responsibility and economic growth, can potentially influence women’s welfare. Using a panel dataset of 94 developing countries from 1990 to 2015, we find that FDI inflows improve women’s welfare and decrease gender inequality. However, the impact is lower in countries where women have low access to resources and face a heavier burden to open a business. This suggests that for countries to fully benefit from FDI inflows, they should ensure that women can enjoy free access to the labor market and associated income. Online.
This paper examines trends in indicators of gender equality and women’s development, using evidence derived from individual indicators and gender equality indices. We extend both the United Nations Development Program’s Gender Development Index and Gender Inequality Index to examine time trends. In recent decades, the world has moved closer to gender equality and narrowed gaps in education, health, and economic and political opportunity; however, substantial differences remain, especially in South Asia, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa. The results suggest countries can make meaningful improvements in gender equality, even while significant income differences between countries remain. Online.
Women across the world remain an underutilized resource in the labor force. Participation in the labor force averages around 80 percent for men but only 50 percent for women - nearly half of women's productive potential remains untapped compared to one-fifth for men. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), as a region, saw the largest gains in female labor force participation (LFP) in the world during the last two decades. Women in LAC are becoming increasingly active in paid work, closing the gap with men and catching up to their counterparts in advanced economies at an impressive rate. In this paper, we document the recent trends in female LFP and female education in the LAC region, discuss the size of potential gains to GDP from increasing female LFP and policies which could be deployed towards this goal. Online.
This paper identifies five key issues that are important for the continued efforts to tackle gender inequality: (i) gender inequality needs to be distinguished from gender gaps; (ii) the evolving focus of gender inequality suggests there is still a long way to go to fully address gender inequality; (iii) addressing gender inequality benefits everyone, not just women; (iv) both general policies and targeted gender policies can help address gender inequality; and (v) addressing gender inequality does not need to start with policies targeted at its root causes, but needs to end with eliminating the root causes. The paper concludes by discussing gaps in the literature and policy challenges going forward. Online.
The unequal treatment of women in the law is one of the most visible forms of gender inequality. Prevalent legal constraints on the basis of gender prevent women, and thereby economies, from reaching their true potential. In this regard, this paper (i) documents the evolution of gender discriminatory laws around the globe, and (ii) sheds light on the role of legal gender equality in income convergence across countries. It shows that despite the remarkable progress toward gender equality in the law over the last five decades, the legal environment across the world is still far from providing a level playing field for women. Moreover, cross-country gaps in gender discriminatory laws have persisted and even widened over the years, meaning that some countries have lagged behind the progress in repealing the laws that act as a barrier to women’s economic inclusion. The results imply that legal reforms supportive of gender equality help poorer countries catch up with the living standards in the advanced economies. Online.
