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Blog post
How clean energy can empower women in rural communities
Developing a gender-inclusive clean energy sector can empower women in rural communities as both consumers and producers of clean energy and help facilitate the transition towards a greener and more sustainable future. Supporting women’s advancement in the sector requires targeted policy focusing on increasing access to credit, training and skill development, education,...
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Blog post
Gender equality through secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa
Early marriage and pregnancy can be detrimental to women’s health, agency, and labour market outcomes. However, compelling evidence from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) shows that each additional year of secondary education mitigates these risks in both the short- and long-term. Over the last two decades, SSA has made enormous progress in increasing access to schooling in...
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Blog post
Addressing gender-based violence through public health: Evidence from India
The framing of violence against women as a public health issue allows for more robust multi-disciplinary interventions through the healthcare sector and necessitates analysis of the sector’s capacity to recognise, intervene, and prevent GBV. Gender-based violence (GBV) is recognised as a complex health problem rooted in patriarchal social norms and the economic...
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Blog post
Progressing female labour force participation in Bangladesh
Despite impressive achievements in schooling and microfinance for women, Bangladesh still has low female labour force participation. Data from rural Bangladesh suggests that strengthening agro-processing may increase female employment and productivity. The success story of Bangladesh in advancing opportunities for women is well known. By 2015, Bangladesh became one of...
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Blog post
Gender and public service provision: Evidence from Sierra Leone
A field experiment in Freetown, Sierra Leone, shows how a concentration of wealth in favour of men could lead to the provision of public goods preferred by men. This implies that wealth disparity between men and women can have gendered spillover effects for political participation and the demand for public services. In 2020, women made up 50% of the population in...
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Blog post
The gender imbalances in Ethiopia’s dairy value chains
Traditional gender roles that often inhibit women’s agency and access to resources also have the ability to affect their roles in employment. We study the gendered division of labour in dairy value chains in Ethiopia to examine the activities that women are involved in and how involvement differs across farms. Our results show that as dairy farms increase in size and gain...
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Blog post
She wins: Electing women in ethnically divided societies
The Indian Constitution reserves at least 33% of seats in rural local governments for women, and Bihar is among the nine states that have opted for 50% reservation. However, women remain heavily underrepresented at the state and central levels. This note investigates how gender interacts with caste, political campaigns, and experiences of discrimination, to shape...
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Blog post
Where are African women in climate change policy?
Climate change is not experienced equally – Africa is more vulnerable to its effects than other continents, and African women are more vulnerable than men. A key underlying factor is women’s reliance on the natural environment. This article explores how African women can be prioritised in climate change policy through gender mainstreaming, focusing particularly on the...
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Blog post
Targeting teenagers to bridge the gender gap in education
Achieving gender equality in education remains a distant goal in many developing countries, with the COVID-19 pandemic stalling progress on many fronts. Emerging research, however, is highlighting promising, cost-effective programmes and interventions that deserve policymaker attention. Despite significant progress in the last 25 years on increasing girls’ literacy...
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Blog post
Barriers for women in economics: A review of recent findings
The field of economics is one of the most gender imbalanced fields in academia, skewing heavily towards men. In this blog, we focus on three inhibiting mechanisms driving these gender imbalances in the discipline, namely lack of recognition, poor work environments, and self-selection. With only two Nobel economic prizes awarded to women (out of 89 awards) and...
Blog post
Industrialising Africa: The role of services
Services play an increasingly large role in industrialisation and growth. In Africa, services, including intra-regional services trade, must be emphasised in industrialisation policy going forward. Africa has the opportunity to use the services sector to orient growth in a more sustainable and balanced way, as was in Asia, Europe, and North America earlier. The...