Gender

Were You Celebrated on International Men’s Day?

I am pretty sure that most readers of this reflection were not aware that on November 19, we were supposed to observe International Men’s Day (IMD). I am also pretty confident that in most cases the slim majority (50.4%) of the global population wasn’t celebrated either. If my assumption is incorrect, please let me know, as it would make my day to learn otherwise.

IMD was inaugurated on November 19, 1999 in Trinidad and Tobago, although calls for this civil awareness day can be traced to the 1960’s. The objectives of celebrating an IMD include focusing on men’s and boy’s health, improving gender relations, promoting gender equality, furnishing opportunities for gender balance, and highlighting positive role models. IMD is observed in almost 60 countries and is not intended to compete with International Women’s Day (IWD). The theme for the 2014 IMD was “Working Together for Men and Boys.”

Bangladesh and Cambodia Collaborate on Higher Education Development

bangladesh-cambodia-collaboration — The Cambodian Delegation Visiting the Veterinary and Animals Science University in Chittagong on September 2, 2014

Global partnerships often inspire higher education development. Partnerships were traditionally formed between universities in developed and developing countries. Increasingly important, however, are university partnerships across emerging economies where the common challenges of increasing access and ensuring quality are shared. Tested solutions and good practices may be applicable to address similar challenges in another country. Against this backdrop, there has been a close cross-country collaboration between the Higher Education Quality and Capacity Improvement Project (HEQCIP) in Cambodia and the Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project (HEQEP) in Bangladesh since 2010. Inspired by the success stories of HEQEP in recent years, a Cambodian delegation working for HEQCIP visited Bangladesh from August 30 to September 4, 2014 to learn from the experience of the HEQEP, which has had a few years head-start on implementing a competitive research grant program for universities.

Recognizing Prior Competence: Increasing Skilled Manpower in Bangladesh

Ahamad Tanvirul Alam Chowdhury's picture

Sweety, Liza, Asad, Zulfikar and many others like them had a common dream – to have good careers and let their families have a better life. Realization of that dream should have been simple – incomes that matched their accumulation of skills and years of job experience. They however, found this hard to achieve because they did not have accreditation that could assure prospective employers that they could actually deliver. What was needed – for both sides in the employee-employer relationship – was a mechanism to open the pathway to professional empowerment. That mechanism came about in the form of the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) policy of the Government of Bangladesh. Sweety, Liza, Asad and Zulfikar can now proclaim to the world – openly and without reservation – that they possess skills and expertise certified by the Bangladesh Technical Education Board (BTEB).

Ending Violence against Women

Today, November 25, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. According to the United Nations, more than a third of women and girls worldwide experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. In some countries the proportion is at two thirds. More than 130 million girls and women have undergone female genital mutilation. Child marriage is even more pervasive, with 700 million women living today who married as children. In Africa and South Asia, close to half of girls still marry before the age of 18. These practices are declining, but only slowly.

The widespread negative effects of violence against women have been documented, including in the recent World Bank report Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity. Complications related to pregnancy and childbirth lead 70,000 adolescent girls to die each year according to UNFPA’s State of the World Population report.

India: Jeevika Empowers Women in Rural Bihar through New Livelihoods

India: Jeevika Empowers Women in Rural Bihar through New Livelihoods

“We went to sleep hungry.” Women in rural Bihar, India, home to over 100 million people living in poverty, had a difficult time meeting basic needs. A project called Jeevika is organizing these women into self-help groups where they decide how to invest funds, distribute staples, learn basic banking skills, improve rice cultivation, and meet the nutritional needs of mothers.

#TakeOn Violence Against Women, Take a Walk in Their Shoes

Your name is Sarah. You live in New York, or perhaps Nairobi, where you divide your time between caring for your young family and building a small business. Your life is more comfortable than your mother’s, and your children’s prospects are brighter than you might have hoped. Until your husband’s simmering resentment of your growing business turns violent, and he beats you badly.

A Ranking of Adult Workers and Their Skills

Elementary school, Gimhae, Korea. Photo: Flickr/65817306@N00 (Jens-Olaf Walter)

In the world’s richest countries, those with greater inequality in skills proficiency also have higher income inequality, according to the first OECD Survey of Adult Skills (also known as PIAAC), which measures the skills of 16-65 year-olds across 24 countries. The survey includes assessments of adult reading, numeracy, and place in the digital divide. The OECD's Stefano Scarpetta (Director of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs) tell us that this is the first ever comprehensive survey of the actual competencies of OECD adult workers.

This Week in #SouthAsiaDev: November 21, 2014

When disadvantages don’t add up: On gender, ethnicity and education

We often think that all women are in some way subjected to gender-based discrimination, and indeed, there is wealth of evidence to support this belief. The same can be said about ethnic minorities and other social groups—indigenous peoples, refugees, sexual minorities, the poor, immigrants, and people living with HIV/AIDS—who may face barriers in their quest for a better life.

In reality, though, we all have multiple identities, and our abilities, opportunities and achievements are all socially mediated by the way these multiple identities interact with each other. For instance, the feminist literature highlights that day-to-day experiences of ethnic minority women can be drastically different from ethnic majority women, although both groups fare worse than men in most outcomes. While context plays a large role in how ethnicity exacerbates gender-based divisions, such interactions often get manifested in similar ways, through systematic, cumulative achievement gaps across social groups.

World Toilet Day: Focus on Equality and Dignity

Today marks the second annual UN World Toilet Day, an important opportunity to promote global efforts to achieve universal access to sanitation by 2030. With a focus on equality and dignity, this year, World Toilet Day aims to highlight sanitation as a global development priority, especially for women and girls who must compromise their dignity and put their safety at risk when lack of access to sanitation forces them to defecate in the open.