research question on gender inequality

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Contributed equally to this work with: Paola Belingheri, Filippo Chiarello, Andrea Fronzetti Colladon, Paola Rovelli

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Largo L. Lazzarino, Pisa, Italy

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy, Department of Management, Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Faculty of Economics and Management, Centre for Family Business Management, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

Paola Belingheri,
Filippo Chiarello,
Andrea Fronzetti Colladon,
Paola Rovelli

Published: September 21, 2021
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474
Reader Comments

9 Nov 2021: The PLOS ONE Staff (2021) Correction: Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator. PLOS ONE 16(11): e0259930. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259930 View correction

Gender equality is a major problem that places women at a disadvantage thereby stymieing economic growth and societal advancement. In the last two decades, extensive research has been conducted on gender related issues, studying both their antecedents and consequences. However, existing literature reviews fail to provide a comprehensive and clear picture of what has been studied so far, which could guide scholars in their future research. Our paper offers a scoping review of a large portion of the research that has been published over the last 22 years, on gender equality and related issues, with a specific focus on business and economics studies. Combining innovative methods drawn from both network analysis and text mining, we provide a synthesis of 15,465 scientific articles. We identify 27 main research topics, we measure their relevance from a semantic point of view and the relationships among them, highlighting the importance of each topic in the overall gender discourse. We find that prominent research topics mostly relate to women in the workforce–e.g., concerning compensation, role, education, decision-making and career progression. However, some of them are losing momentum, and some other research trends–for example related to female entrepreneurship, leadership and participation in the board of directors–are on the rise. Besides introducing a novel methodology to review broad literature streams, our paper offers a map of the main gender-research trends and presents the most popular and the emerging themes, as well as their intersections, outlining important avenues for future research.

Citation: Belingheri P, Chiarello F, Fronzetti Colladon A, Rovelli P (2021) Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0256474. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474

Editor: Elisa Ughetto, Politecnico di Torino, ITALY

Received: June 25, 2021; Accepted: August 6, 2021; Published: September 21, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Belingheri et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its supporting information files. The only exception is the text of the abstracts (over 15,000) that we have downloaded from Scopus. These abstracts can be retrieved from Scopus, but we do not have permission to redistribute them.

Funding: P.B and F.C.: Grant of the Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction of the University of Pisa (DESTEC) for the project “Measuring Gender Bias with Semantic Analysis: The Development of an Assessment Tool and its Application in the European Space Industry. P.B., F.C., A.F.C., P.R.: Grant of the Italian Association of Management Engineering (AiIG), “Misure di sostegno ai soci giovani AiIG” 2020, for the project “Gender Equality Through Data Intelligence (GEDI)”. F.C.: EU project ASSETs+ Project (Alliance for Strategic Skills addressing Emerging Technologies in Defence) EAC/A03/2018 - Erasmus+ programme, Sector Skills Alliances, Lot 3: Sector Skills Alliance for implementing a new strategic approach (Blueprint) to sectoral cooperation on skills G.A. NUMBER: 612678-EPP-1-2019-1-IT-EPPKA2-SSA-B.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The persistent gender inequalities that currently exist across the developed and developing world are receiving increasing attention from economists, policymakers, and the general public [e.g., 1 – 3 ]. Economic studies have indicated that women’s education and entry into the workforce contributes to social and economic well-being [e.g., 4 , 5 ], while their exclusion from the labor market and from managerial positions has an impact on overall labor productivity and income per capita [ 6 , 7 ]. The United Nations selected gender equality, with an emphasis on female education, as part of the Millennium Development Goals [ 8 ], and gender equality at-large as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030 [ 9 ]. These latter objectives involve not only developing nations, but rather all countries, to achieve economic, social and environmental well-being.

As is the case with many SDGs, gender equality is still far from being achieved and persists across education, access to opportunities, or presence in decision-making positions [ 7 , 10 , 11 ]. As we enter the last decade for the SDGs’ implementation, and while we are battling a global health pandemic, effective and efficient action becomes paramount to reach this ambitious goal.

Scholars have dedicated a massive effort towards understanding gender equality, its determinants, its consequences for women and society, and the appropriate actions and policies to advance women’s equality. Many topics have been covered, ranging from women’s education and human capital [ 12 , 13 ] and their role in society [e.g., 14 , 15 ], to their appointment in firms’ top ranked positions [e.g., 16 , 17 ] and performance implications [e.g., 18 , 19 ]. Despite some attempts, extant literature reviews provide a narrow view on these issues, restricted to specific topics–e.g., female students’ presence in STEM fields [ 20 ], educational gender inequality [ 5 ], the gender pay gap [ 21 ], the glass ceiling effect [ 22 ], leadership [ 23 ], entrepreneurship [ 24 ], women’s presence on the board of directors [ 25 , 26 ], diversity management [ 27 ], gender stereotypes in advertisement [ 28 ], or specific professions [ 29 ]. A comprehensive view on gender-related research, taking stock of key findings and under-studied topics is thus lacking.

Extant literature has also highlighted that gender issues, and their economic and social ramifications, are complex topics that involve a large number of possible antecedents and outcomes [ 7 ]. Indeed, gender equality actions are most effective when implemented in unison with other SDGs (e.g., with SDG 8, see [ 30 ]) in a synergetic perspective [ 10 ]. Many bodies of literature (e.g., business, economics, development studies, sociology and psychology) approach the problem of achieving gender equality from different perspectives–often addressing specific and narrow aspects. This sometimes leads to a lack of clarity about how different issues, circumstances, and solutions may be related in precipitating or mitigating gender inequality or its effects. As the number of papers grows at an increasing pace, this issue is exacerbated and there is a need to step back and survey the body of gender equality literature as a whole. There is also a need to examine synergies between different topics and approaches, as well as gaps in our understanding of how different problems and solutions work together. Considering the important topic of women’s economic and social empowerment, this paper aims to fill this gap by answering the following research question: what are the most relevant findings in the literature on gender equality and how do they relate to each other ?

To do so, we conduct a scoping review [ 31 ], providing a synthesis of 15,465 articles dealing with gender equity related issues published in the last twenty-two years, covering both the periods of the MDGs and the SDGs (i.e., 2000 to mid 2021) in all the journals indexed in the Academic Journal Guide’s 2018 ranking of business and economics journals. Given the huge amount of research conducted on the topic, we adopt an innovative methodology, which relies on social network analysis and text mining. These techniques are increasingly adopted when surveying large bodies of text. Recently, they were applied to perform analysis of online gender communication differences [ 32 ] and gender behaviors in online technology communities [ 33 ], to identify and classify sexual harassment instances in academia [ 34 ], and to evaluate the gender inclusivity of disaster management policies [ 35 ].

Applied to the title, abstracts and keywords of the articles in our sample, this methodology allows us to identify a set of 27 recurrent topics within which we automatically classify the papers. Introducing additional novelty, by means of the Semantic Brand Score (SBS) indicator [ 36 ] and the SBS BI app [ 37 ], we assess the importance of each topic in the overall gender equality discourse and its relationships with the other topics, as well as trends over time, with a more accurate description than that offered by traditional literature reviews relying solely on the number of papers presented in each topic.

This methodology, applied to gender equality research spanning the past twenty-two years, enables two key contributions. First, we extract the main message that each document is conveying and how this is connected to other themes in literature, providing a rich picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the emerging topics. Second, by examining the semantic relationship between topics and how tightly their discourses are linked, we can identify the key relationships and connections between different topics. This semi-automatic methodology is also highly reproducible with minimum effort.

This literature review is organized as follows. In the next section, we present how we selected relevant papers and how we analyzed them through text mining and social network analysis. We then illustrate the importance of 27 selected research topics, measured by means of the SBS indicator. In the results section, we present an overview of the literature based on the SBS results–followed by an in-depth narrative analysis of the top 10 topics (i.e., those with the highest SBS) and their connections. Subsequently, we highlight a series of under-studied connections between the topics where there is potential for future research. Through this analysis, we build a map of the main gender-research trends in the last twenty-two years–presenting the most popular themes. We conclude by highlighting key areas on which research should focused in the future.

Our aim is to map a broad topic, gender equality research, that has been approached through a host of different angles and through different disciplines. Scoping reviews are the most appropriate as they provide the freedom to map different themes and identify literature gaps, thereby guiding the recommendation of new research agendas [ 38 ].

Several practical approaches have been proposed to identify and assess the underlying topics of a specific field using big data [ 39 – 41 ], but many of them fail without proper paper retrieval and text preprocessing. This is specifically true for a research field such as the gender-related one, which comprises the work of scholars from different backgrounds. In this section, we illustrate a novel approach for the analysis of scientific (gender-related) papers that relies on methods and tools of social network analysis and text mining. Our procedure has four main steps: (1) data collection, (2) text preprocessing, (3) keywords extraction and classification, and (4) evaluation of semantic importance and image.

Data collection

In this study, we analyze 22 years of literature on gender-related research. Following established practice for scoping reviews [ 42 ], our data collection consisted of two main steps, which we summarize here below.

Firstly, we retrieved from the Scopus database all the articles written in English that contained the term “gender” in their title, abstract or keywords and were published in a journal listed in the Academic Journal Guide 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) ( https://charteredabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AJG2018-Methodology.pdf ), considering the time period from Jan 2000 to May 2021. We used this information considering that abstracts, titles and keywords represent the most informative part of a paper, while using the full-text would increase the signal-to-noise ratio for information extraction. Indeed, these textual elements already demonstrated to be reliable sources of information for the task of domain lexicon extraction [ 43 , 44 ]. We chose Scopus as source of literature because of its popularity, its update rate, and because it offers an API to ease the querying process. Indeed, while it does not allow to retrieve the full text of scientific articles, the Scopus API offers access to titles, abstracts, citation information and metadata for all its indexed scholarly journals. Moreover, we decided to focus on the journals listed in the AJG 2018 ranking because we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies only. The AJG is indeed widely used by universities and business schools as a reference point for journal and research rigor and quality. This first step, executed in June 2021, returned more than 55,000 papers.

In the second step–because a look at the papers showed very sparse results, many of which were not in line with the topic of this literature review (e.g., papers dealing with health care or medical issues, where the word gender indicates the gender of the patients)–we applied further inclusion criteria to make the sample more focused on the topic of this literature review (i.e., women’s gender equality issues). Specifically, we only retained those papers mentioning, in their title and/or abstract, both gender-related keywords (e.g., daughter, female, mother) and keywords referring to bias and equality issues (e.g., equality, bias, diversity, inclusion). After text pre-processing (see next section), keywords were first identified from a frequency-weighted list of words found in the titles, abstracts and keywords in the initial list of papers, extracted through text mining (following the same approach as [ 43 ]). They were selected by two of the co-authors independently, following respectively a bottom up and a top-down approach. The bottom-up approach consisted of examining the words found in the frequency-weighted list and classifying those related to gender and equality. The top-down approach consisted in searching in the word list for notable gender and equality-related words. Table 1 reports the sets of keywords we considered, together with some examples of words that were used to search for their presence in the dataset (a full list is provided in the S1 Text ). At end of this second step, we obtained a final sample of 15,465 relevant papers.

PPT PowerPoint slide
PNG larger image
TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t001

Text processing and keyword extraction

Text preprocessing aims at structuring text into a form that can be analyzed by statistical models. In the present section, we describe the preprocessing steps we applied to paper titles and abstracts, which, as explained below, partially follow a standard text preprocessing pipeline [ 45 ]. These activities have been performed using the R package udpipe [ 46 ].

The first step is n-gram extraction (i.e., a sequence of words from a given text sample) to identify which n-grams are important in the analysis, since domain-specific lexicons are often composed by bi-grams and tri-grams [ 47 ]. Multi-word extraction is usually implemented with statistics and linguistic rules, thus using the statistical properties of n-grams or machine learning approaches [ 48 ]. However, for the present paper, we used Scopus metadata in order to have a more effective and efficient n-grams collection approach [ 49 ]. We used the keywords of each paper in order to tag n-grams with their associated keywords automatically. Using this greedy approach, it was possible to collect all the keywords listed by the authors of the papers. From this list, we extracted only keywords composed by two, three and four words, we removed all the acronyms and rare keywords (i.e., appearing in less than 1% of papers), and we clustered keywords showing a high orthographic similarity–measured using a Levenshtein distance [ 50 ] lower than 2, considering these groups of keywords as representing same concepts, but expressed with different spelling. After tagging the n-grams in the abstracts, we followed a common data preparation pipeline that consists of the following steps: (i) tokenization, that splits the text into tokens (i.e., single words and previously tagged multi-words); (ii) removal of stop-words (i.e. those words that add little meaning to the text, usually being very common and short functional words–such as “and”, “or”, or “of”); (iii) parts-of-speech tagging, that is providing information concerning the morphological role of a word and its morphosyntactic context (e.g., if the token is a determiner, the next token is a noun or an adjective with very high confidence, [ 51 ]); and (iv) lemmatization, which consists in substituting each word with its dictionary form (or lemma). The output of the latter step allows grouping together the inflected forms of a word. For example, the verbs “am”, “are”, and “is” have the shared lemma “be”, or the nouns “cat” and “cats” both share the lemma “cat”. We preferred lemmatization over stemming [ 52 ] in order to obtain more interpretable results.

In addition, we identified a further set of keywords (with respect to those listed in the “keywords” field) by applying a series of automatic words unification and removal steps, as suggested in past research [ 53 , 54 ]. We removed: sparse terms (i.e., occurring in less than 0.1% of all documents), common terms (i.e., occurring in more than 10% of all documents) and retained only nouns and adjectives. It is relevant to notice that no document was lost due to these steps. We then used the TF-IDF function [ 55 ] to produce a new list of keywords. We additionally tested other approaches for the identification and clustering of keywords–such as TextRank [ 56 ] or Latent Dirichlet Allocation [ 57 ]–without obtaining more informative results.

Classification of research topics

To guide the literature analysis, two experts met regularly to examine the sample of collected papers and to identify the main topics and trends in gender research. Initially, they conducted brainstorming sessions on the topics they expected to find, due to their knowledge of the literature. This led to an initial list of topics. Subsequently, the experts worked independently, also supported by the keywords in paper titles and abstracts extracted with the procedure described above.

Considering all this information, each expert identified and clustered relevant keywords into topics. At the end of the process, the two assignments were compared and exhibited a 92% agreement. Another meeting was held to discuss discordant cases and reach a consensus. This resulted in a list of 27 topics, briefly introduced in Table 2 and subsequently detailed in the following sections.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t002

Evaluation of semantic importance

Working on the lemmatized corpus of the 15,465 papers included in our sample, we proceeded with the evaluation of semantic importance trends for each topic and with the analysis of their connections and prevalent textual associations. To this aim, we used the Semantic Brand Score indicator [ 36 ], calculated through the SBS BI webapp [ 37 ] that also produced a brand image report for each topic. For this study we relied on the computing resources of the ENEA/CRESCO infrastructure [ 58 ].

The Semantic Brand Score (SBS) is a measure of semantic importance that combines methods of social network analysis and text mining. It is usually applied for the analysis of (big) textual data to evaluate the importance of one or more brands, names, words, or sets of keywords [ 36 ]. Indeed, the concept of “brand” is intended in a flexible way and goes beyond products or commercial brands. In this study, we evaluate the SBS time-trends of the keywords defining the research topics discussed in the previous section. Semantic importance comprises the three dimensions of topic prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Prevalence measures how frequently a research topic is used in the discourse. The more a topic is mentioned by scientific articles, the more the research community will be aware of it, with possible increase of future studies; this construct is partly related to that of brand awareness [ 59 ]. This effect is even stronger, considering that we are analyzing the title, abstract and keywords of the papers, i.e. the parts that have the highest visibility. A very important characteristic of the SBS is that it considers the relationships among words in a text. Topic importance is not just a matter of how frequently a topic is mentioned, but also of the associations a topic has in the text. Specifically, texts are transformed into networks of co-occurring words, and relationships are studied through social network analysis [ 60 ]. This step is necessary to calculate the other two dimensions of our semantic importance indicator. Accordingly, a social network of words is generated for each time period considered in the analysis–i.e., a graph made of n nodes (words) and E edges weighted by co-occurrence frequency, with W being the set of edge weights. The keywords representing each topic were clustered into single nodes.

The construct of diversity relates to that of brand image [ 59 ], in the sense that it considers the richness and distinctiveness of textual (topic) associations. Considering the above-mentioned networks, we calculated diversity using the distinctiveness centrality metric–as in the formula presented by Fronzetti Colladon and Naldi [ 61 ].

Lastly, connectivity was measured as the weighted betweenness centrality [ 62 , 63 ] of each research topic node. We used the formula presented by Wasserman and Faust [ 60 ]. The dimension of connectivity represents the “brokerage power” of each research topic–i.e., how much it can serve as a bridge to connect other terms (and ultimately topics) in the discourse [ 36 ].

The SBS is the final composite indicator obtained by summing the standardized scores of prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Standardization was carried out considering all the words in the corpus, for each specific timeframe.

This methodology, applied to a large and heterogeneous body of text, enables to automatically identify two important sets of information that add value to the literature review. Firstly, the relevance of each topic in literature is measured through a composite indicator of semantic importance, rather than simply looking at word frequencies. This provides a much richer picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the topics that are emerging in the literature. Secondly, it enables to examine the extent of the semantic relationship between topics, looking at how tightly their discourses are linked. In a field such as gender equality, where many topics are closely linked to each other and present overlaps in issues and solutions, this methodology offers a novel perspective with respect to traditional literature reviews. In addition, it ensures reproducibility over time and the possibility to semi-automatically update the analysis, as new papers become available.

Overview of main topics

In terms of descriptive textual statistics, our corpus is made of 15,465 text documents, consisting of a total of 2,685,893 lemmatized tokens (words) and 32,279 types. As a result, the type-token ratio is 1.2%. The number of hapaxes is 12,141, with a hapax-token ratio of 37.61%.

Fig 1 shows the list of 27 topics by decreasing SBS. The most researched topic is compensation , exceeding all others in prevalence, diversity, and connectivity. This means it is not only mentioned more often than other topics, but it is also connected to a greater number of other topics and is central to the discourse on gender equality. The next four topics are, in order of SBS, role , education , decision-making , and career progression . These topics, except for education , all concern women in the workforce. Between these first five topics and the following ones there is a clear drop in SBS scores. In particular, the topics that follow have a lower connectivity than the first five. They are hiring , performance , behavior , organization , and human capital . Again, except for behavior and human capital , the other three topics are purely related to women in the workforce. After another drop-off, the following topics deal prevalently with women in society. This trend highlights that research on gender in business journals has so far mainly paid attention to the conditions that women experience in business contexts, while also devoting some attention to women in society.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g001

Fig 2 shows the SBS time series of the top 10 topics. While there has been a general increase in the number of Scopus-indexed publications in the last decade, we notice that some SBS trends remain steady, or even decrease. In particular, we observe that the main topic of the last twenty-two years, compensation , is losing momentum. Since 2016, it has been surpassed by decision-making , education and role , which may indicate that literature is increasingly attempting to identify root causes of compensation inequalities. Moreover, in the last two years, the topics of hiring , performance , and organization are experiencing the largest importance increase.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g002

Fig 3 shows the SBS time trends of the remaining 17 topics (i.e., those not in the top 10). As we can see from the graph, there are some that maintain a steady trend–such as reputation , management , networks and governance , which also seem to have little importance. More relevant topics with average stationary trends (except for the last two years) are culture , family , and parenting . The feminine topic is among the most important here, and one of those that exhibit the larger variations over time (similarly to leadership ). On the other hand, the are some topics that, even if not among the most important, show increasing SBS trends; therefore, they could be considered as emerging topics and could become popular in the near future. These are entrepreneurship , leadership , board of directors , and sustainability . These emerging topics are also interesting to anticipate future trends in gender equality research that are conducive to overall equality in society.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g003

In addition to the SBS score of the different topics, the network of terms they are associated to enables to gauge the extent to which their images (textual associations) overlap or differ ( Fig 4 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g004

There is a central cluster of topics with high similarity, which are all connected with women in the workforce. The cluster includes topics such as organization , decision-making , performance , hiring , human capital , education and compensation . In addition, the topic of well-being is found within this cluster, suggesting that women’s equality in the workforce is associated to well-being considerations. The emerging topics of entrepreneurship and leadership are also closely connected with each other, possibly implying that leadership is a much-researched quality in female entrepreneurship. Topics that are relatively more distant include personality , politics , feminine , empowerment , management , board of directors , reputation , governance , parenting , masculine and network .

The following sections describe the top 10 topics and their main associations in literature (see Table 3 ), while providing a brief overview of the emerging topics.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t003

Compensation.

The topic of compensation is related to the topics of role , hiring , education and career progression , however, also sees a very high association with the words gap and inequality . Indeed, a well-known debate in degrowth economics centers around whether and how to adequately compensate women for their childbearing, childrearing, caregiver and household work [e.g., 30 ].

Even in paid work, women continue being offered lower compensations than their male counterparts who have the same job or cover the same role [ 64 – 67 ]. This severe inequality has been widely studied by scholars over the last twenty-two years. Dealing with this topic, some specific roles have been addressed. Specifically, research highlighted differences in compensation between female and male CEOs [e.g., 68 ], top executives [e.g., 69 ], and boards’ directors [e.g., 70 ]. Scholars investigated the determinants of these gaps, such as the gender composition of the board [e.g., 71 – 73 ] or women’s individual characteristics [e.g., 71 , 74 ].

Among these individual characteristics, education plays a relevant role [ 75 ]. Education is indeed presented as the solution for women, not only to achieve top executive roles, but also to reduce wage inequality [e.g., 76 , 77 ]. Past research has highlighted education influences on gender wage gaps, specifically referring to gender differences in skills [e.g., 78 ], college majors [e.g., 79 ], and college selectivity [e.g., 80 ].

Finally, the wage gap issue is strictly interrelated with hiring –e.g., looking at whether being a mother affects hiring and compensation [e.g., 65 , 81 ] or relating compensation to unemployment [e.g., 82 ]–and career progression –for instance looking at meritocracy [ 83 , 84 ] or the characteristics of the boss for whom women work [e.g., 85 ].

The roles covered by women have been deeply investigated. Scholars have focused on the role of women in their families and the society as a whole [e.g., 14 , 15 ], and, more widely, in business contexts [e.g., 18 , 81 ]. Indeed, despite still lagging behind their male counterparts [e.g., 86 , 87 ], in the last decade there has been an increase in top ranked positions achieved by women [e.g., 88 , 89 ]. Following this phenomenon, scholars have posed greater attention towards the presence of women in the board of directors [e.g., 16 , 18 , 90 , 91 ], given the increasing pressure to appoint female directors that firms, especially listed ones, have experienced. Other scholars have focused on the presence of women covering the role of CEO [e.g., 17 , 92 ] or being part of the top management team [e.g., 93 ]. Irrespectively of the level of analysis, all these studies tried to uncover the antecedents of women’s presence among top managers [e.g., 92 , 94 ] and the consequences of having a them involved in the firm’s decision-making –e.g., on performance [e.g., 19 , 95 , 96 ], risk [e.g., 97 , 98 ], and corporate social responsibility [e.g., 99 , 100 ].

Besides studying the difficulties and discriminations faced by women in getting a job [ 81 , 101 ], and, more specifically in the hiring , appointment, or career progression to these apical roles [e.g., 70 , 83 ], the majority of research of women’s roles dealt with compensation issues. Specifically, scholars highlight the pay-gap that still exists between women and men, both in general [e.g., 64 , 65 ], as well as referring to boards’ directors [e.g., 70 , 102 ], CEOs and executives [e.g., 69 , 103 , 104 ].

Finally, other scholars focused on the behavior of women when dealing with business. In this sense, particular attention has been paid to leadership and entrepreneurial behaviors. The former quite overlaps with dealing with the roles mentioned above, but also includes aspects such as leaders being stereotyped as masculine [e.g., 105 ], the need for greater exposure to female leaders to reduce biases [e.g., 106 ], or female leaders acting as queen bees [e.g., 107 ]. Regarding entrepreneurship , scholars mainly investigated women’s entrepreneurial entry [e.g., 108 , 109 ], differences between female and male entrepreneurs in the evaluations and funding received from investors [e.g., 110 , 111 ], and their performance gap [e.g., 112 , 113 ].

Education has long been recognized as key to social advancement and economic stability [ 114 ], for job progression and also a barrier to gender equality, especially in STEM-related fields. Research on education and gender equality is mostly linked with the topics of compensation , human capital , career progression , hiring , parenting and decision-making .

Education contributes to a higher human capital [ 115 ] and constitutes an investment on the part of women towards their future. In this context, literature points to the gender gap in educational attainment, and the consequences for women from a social, economic, personal and professional standpoint. Women are found to have less access to formal education and information, especially in emerging countries, which in turn may cause them to lose social and economic opportunities [e.g., 12 , 116 – 119 ]. Education in local and rural communities is also paramount to communicate the benefits of female empowerment , contributing to overall societal well-being [e.g., 120 ].

Once women access education, the image they have of the world and their place in society (i.e., habitus) affects their education performance [ 13 ] and is passed on to their children. These situations reinforce gender stereotypes, which become self-fulfilling prophecies that may negatively affect female students’ performance by lowering their confidence and heightening their anxiety [ 121 , 122 ]. Besides formal education, also the information that women are exposed to on a daily basis contributes to their human capital . Digital inequalities, for instance, stems from men spending more time online and acquiring higher digital skills than women [ 123 ].

Education is also a factor that should boost employability of candidates and thus hiring , career progression and compensation , however the relationship between these factors is not straightforward [ 115 ]. First, educational choices ( decision-making ) are influenced by variables such as self-efficacy and the presence of barriers, irrespectively of the career opportunities they offer, especially in STEM [ 124 ]. This brings additional difficulties to women’s enrollment and persistence in scientific and technical fields of study due to stereotypes and biases [ 125 , 126 ]. Moreover, access to education does not automatically translate into job opportunities for women and minority groups [ 127 , 128 ] or into female access to managerial positions [ 129 ].

Finally, parenting is reported as an antecedent of education [e.g., 130 ], with much of the literature focusing on the role of parents’ education on the opportunities afforded to children to enroll in education [ 131 – 134 ] and the role of parenting in their offspring’s perception of study fields and attitudes towards learning [ 135 – 138 ]. Parental education is also a predictor of the other related topics, namely human capital and compensation [ 139 ].

Decision-making.

This literature mainly points to the fact that women are thought to make decisions differently than men. Women have indeed different priorities, such as they care more about people’s well-being, working with people or helping others, rather than maximizing their personal (or their firm’s) gain [ 140 ]. In other words, women typically present more communal than agentic behaviors, which are instead more frequent among men [ 141 ]. These different attitude, behavior and preferences in turn affect the decisions they make [e.g., 142 ] and the decision-making of the firm in which they work [e.g., 143 ].

At the individual level, gender affects, for instance, career aspirations [e.g., 144 ] and choices [e.g., 142 , 145 ], or the decision of creating a venture [e.g., 108 , 109 , 146 ]. Moreover, in everyday life, women and men make different decisions regarding partners [e.g., 147 ], childcare [e.g., 148 ], education [e.g., 149 ], attention to the environment [e.g., 150 ] and politics [e.g., 151 ].

At the firm level, scholars highlighted, for example, how the presence of women in the board affects corporate decisions [e.g., 152 , 153 ], that female CEOs are more conservative in accounting decisions [e.g., 154 ], or that female CFOs tend to make more conservative decisions regarding the firm’s financial reporting [e.g., 155 ]. Nevertheless, firm level research also investigated decisions that, influenced by gender bias, affect women, such as those pertaining hiring [e.g., 156 , 157 ], compensation [e.g., 73 , 158 ], or the empowerment of women once appointed [ 159 ].

Career progression.

Once women have entered the workforce, the key aspect to achieve gender equality becomes career progression , including efforts toward overcoming the glass ceiling. Indeed, according to the SBS analysis, career progression is highly related to words such as work, social issues and equality. The topic with which it has the highest semantic overlap is role , followed by decision-making , hiring , education , compensation , leadership , human capital , and family .

Career progression implies an advancement in the hierarchical ladder of the firm, assigning managerial roles to women. Coherently, much of the literature has focused on identifying rationales for a greater female participation in the top management team and board of directors [e.g., 95 ] as well as the best criteria to ensure that the decision-makers promote the most valuable employees irrespectively of their individual characteristics, such as gender [e.g., 84 ]. The link between career progression , role and compensation is often provided in practice by performance appraisal exercises, frequently rooted in a culture of meritocracy that guides bonuses, salary increases and promotions. However, performance appraisals can actually mask gender-biased decisions where women are held to higher standards than their male colleagues [e.g., 83 , 84 , 95 , 160 , 161 ]. Women often have less opportunities to gain leadership experience and are less visible than their male colleagues, which constitute barriers to career advancement [e.g., 162 ]. Therefore, transparency and accountability, together with procedures that discourage discretionary choices, are paramount to achieve a fair career progression [e.g., 84 ], together with the relaxation of strict job boundaries in favor of cross-functional and self-directed tasks [e.g., 163 ].

In addition, a series of stereotypes about the type of leadership characteristics that are required for top management positions, which fit better with typical male and agentic attributes, are another key barrier to career advancement for women [e.g., 92 , 160 ].

Hiring is the entrance gateway for women into the workforce. Therefore, it is related to other workforce topics such as compensation , role , career progression , decision-making , human capital , performance , organization and education .

A first stream of literature focuses on the process leading up to candidates’ job applications, demonstrating that bias exists before positions are even opened, and it is perpetuated both by men and women through networking and gatekeeping practices [e.g., 164 , 165 ].

The hiring process itself is also subject to biases [ 166 ], for example gender-congruity bias that leads to men being preferred candidates in male-dominated sectors [e.g., 167 ], women being hired in positions with higher risk of failure [e.g., 168 ] and limited transparency and accountability afforded by written processes and procedures [e.g., 164 ] that all contribute to ascriptive inequality. In addition, providing incentives for evaluators to hire women may actually work to this end; however, this is not the case when supporting female candidates endangers higher-ranking male ones [ 169 ].

Another interesting perspective, instead, looks at top management teams’ composition and the effects on hiring practices, indicating that firms with more women in top management are less likely to lay off staff [e.g., 152 ].

Performance.

Several scholars posed their attention towards women’s performance, its consequences [e.g., 170 , 171 ] and the implications of having women in decision-making positions [e.g., 18 , 19 ].

At the individual level, research focused on differences in educational and academic performance between women and men, especially referring to the gender gap in STEM fields [e.g., 171 ]. The presence of stereotype threats–that is the expectation that the members of a social group (e.g., women) “must deal with the possibility of being judged or treated stereotypically, or of doing something that would confirm the stereotype” [ 172 ]–affects women’s interested in STEM [e.g., 173 ], as well as their cognitive ability tests, penalizing them [e.g., 174 ]. A stronger gender identification enhances this gap [e.g., 175 ], whereas mentoring and role models can be used as solutions to this problem [e.g., 121 ]. Despite the negative effect of stereotype threats on girls’ performance [ 176 ], female and male students perform equally in mathematics and related subjects [e.g., 177 ]. Moreover, while individuals’ performance at school and university generally affects their achievements and the field in which they end up working, evidence reveals that performance in math or other scientific subjects does not explain why fewer women enter STEM working fields; rather this gap depends on other aspects, such as culture, past working experiences, or self-efficacy [e.g., 170 ]. Finally, scholars have highlighted the penalization that women face for their positive performance, for instance when they succeed in traditionally male areas [e.g., 178 ]. This penalization is explained by the violation of gender-stereotypic prescriptions [e.g., 179 , 180 ], that is having women well performing in agentic areas, which are typical associated to men. Performance penalization can thus be overcome by clearly conveying communal characteristics and behaviors [ 178 ].

Evidence has been provided on how the involvement of women in boards of directors and decision-making positions affects firms’ performance. Nevertheless, results are mixed, with some studies showing positive effects on financial [ 19 , 181 , 182 ] and corporate social performance [ 99 , 182 , 183 ]. Other studies maintain a negative association [e.g., 18 ], and other again mixed [e.g., 184 ] or non-significant association [e.g., 185 ]. Also with respect to the presence of a female CEO, mixed results emerged so far, with some researches demonstrating a positive effect on firm’s performance [e.g., 96 , 186 ], while other obtaining only a limited evidence of this relationship [e.g., 103 ] or a negative one [e.g., 187 ].

Finally, some studies have investigated whether and how women’s performance affects their hiring [e.g., 101 ] and career progression [e.g., 83 , 160 ]. For instance, academic performance leads to different returns in hiring for women and men. Specifically, high-achieving men are called back significantly more often than high-achieving women, which are penalized when they have a major in mathematics; this result depends on employers’ gendered standards for applicants [e.g., 101 ]. Once appointed, performance ratings are more strongly related to promotions for women than men, and promoted women typically show higher past performance ratings than those of promoted men. This suggesting that women are subject to stricter standards for promotion [e.g., 160 ].

Behavioral aspects related to gender follow two main streams of literature. The first examines female personality and behavior in the workplace, and their alignment with cultural expectations or stereotypes [e.g., 188 ] as well as their impacts on equality. There is a common bias that depicts women as less agentic than males. Certain characteristics, such as those more congruent with male behaviors–e.g., self-promotion [e.g., 189 ], negotiation skills [e.g., 190 ] and general agentic behavior [e.g., 191 ]–, are less accepted in women. However, characteristics such as individualism in women have been found to promote greater gender equality in society [ 192 ]. In addition, behaviors such as display of emotions [e.g., 193 ], which are stereotypically female, work against women’s acceptance in the workplace, requiring women to carefully moderate their behavior to avoid exclusion. A counter-intuitive result is that women and minorities, which are more marginalized in the workplace, tend to be better problem-solvers in innovation competitions due to their different knowledge bases [ 194 ].

The other side of the coin is examined in a parallel literature stream on behavior towards women in the workplace. As a result of biases, prejudices and stereotypes, women may experience adverse behavior from their colleagues, such as incivility and harassment, which undermine their well-being [e.g., 195 , 196 ]. Biases that go beyond gender, such as for overweight people, are also more strongly applied to women [ 197 ].

Organization.

The role of women and gender bias in organizations has been studied from different perspectives, which mirror those presented in detail in the following sections. Specifically, most research highlighted the stereotypical view of leaders [e.g., 105 ] and the roles played by women within firms, for instance referring to presence in the board of directors [e.g., 18 , 90 , 91 ], appointment as CEOs [e.g., 16 ], or top executives [e.g., 93 ].

Scholars have investigated antecedents and consequences of the presence of women in these apical roles. On the one side they looked at hiring and career progression [e.g., 83 , 92 , 160 , 168 , 198 ], finding women typically disadvantaged with respect to their male counterparts. On the other side, they studied women’s leadership styles and influence on the firm’s decision-making [e.g., 152 , 154 , 155 , 199 ], with implications for performance [e.g., 18 , 19 , 96 ].

Human capital.

Human capital is a transverse topic that touches upon many different aspects of female gender equality. As such, it has the most associations with other topics, starting with education as mentioned above, with career-related topics such as role , decision-making , hiring , career progression , performance , compensation , leadership and organization . Another topic with which there is a close connection is behavior . In general, human capital is approached both from the education standpoint but also from the perspective of social capital.

The behavioral aspect in human capital comprises research related to gender differences for example in cultural and religious beliefs that influence women’s attitudes and perceptions towards STEM subjects [ 142 , 200 – 202 ], towards employment [ 203 ] or towards environmental issues [ 150 , 204 ]. These cultural differences also emerge in the context of globalization which may accelerate gender equality in the workforce [ 205 , 206 ]. Gender differences also appear in behaviors such as motivation [ 207 ], and in negotiation [ 190 ], and have repercussions on women’s decision-making related to their careers. The so-called gender equality paradox sees women in countries with lower gender equality more likely to pursue studies and careers in STEM fields, whereas the gap in STEM enrollment widens as countries achieve greater equality in society [ 171 ].

Career progression is modeled by literature as a choice-process where personal preferences, culture and decision-making affect the chosen path and the outcomes. Some literature highlights how women tend to self-select into different professions than men, often due to stereotypes rather than actual ability to perform in these professions [ 142 , 144 ]. These stereotypes also affect the perceptions of female performance or the amount of human capital required to equal male performance [ 110 , 193 , 208 ], particularly for mothers [ 81 ]. It is therefore often assumed that women are better suited to less visible and less leadership -oriented roles [ 209 ]. Women also express differing preferences towards work-family balance, which affect whether and how they pursue human capital gains [ 210 ], and ultimately their career progression and salary .

On the other hand, men are often unaware of gendered processes and behaviors that they carry forward in their interactions and decision-making [ 211 , 212 ]. Therefore, initiatives aimed at increasing managers’ human capital –by raising awareness of gender disparities in their organizations and engaging them in diversity promotion–are essential steps to counter gender bias and segregation [ 213 ].

Emerging topics: Leadership and entrepreneurship

Among the emerging topics, the most pervasive one is women reaching leadership positions in the workforce and in society. This is still a rare occurrence for two main types of factors, on the one hand, bias and discrimination make it harder for women to access leadership positions [e.g., 214 – 216 ], on the other hand, the competitive nature and high pressure associated with leadership positions, coupled with the lack of women currently represented, reduce women’s desire to achieve them [e.g., 209 , 217 ]. Women are more effective leaders when they have access to education, resources and a diverse environment with representation [e.g., 218 , 219 ].

One sector where there is potential for women to carve out a leadership role is entrepreneurship . Although at the start of the millennium the discourse on entrepreneurship was found to be “discriminatory, gender-biased, ethnocentrically determined and ideologically controlled” [ 220 ], an increasing body of literature is studying how to stimulate female entrepreneurship as an alternative pathway to wealth, leadership and empowerment [e.g., 221 ]. Many barriers exist for women to access entrepreneurship, including the institutional and legal environment, social and cultural factors, access to knowledge and resources, and individual behavior [e.g., 222 , 223 ]. Education has been found to raise women’s entrepreneurial intentions [e.g., 224 ], although this effect is smaller than for men [e.g., 109 ]. In addition, increasing self-efficacy and risk-taking behavior constitute important success factors [e.g., 225 ].

Finally, the topic of sustainability is worth mentioning, as it is the primary objective of the SDGs and is closely associated with societal well-being. As society grapples with the effects of climate change and increasing depletion of natural resources, a narrative has emerged on women and their greater link to the environment [ 226 ]. Studies in developed countries have found some support for women leaders’ attention to sustainability issues in firms [e.g., 227 – 229 ], and smaller resource consumption by women [ 230 ]. At the same time, women will likely be more affected by the consequences of climate change [e.g., 230 ] but often lack the decision-making power to influence local decision-making on resource management and environmental policies [e.g., 231 ].

Research gaps and conclusions

Research on gender equality has advanced rapidly in the past decades, with a steady increase in publications, both in mainstream topics related to women in education and the workforce, and in emerging topics. Through a novel approach combining methods of text mining and social network analysis, we examined a comprehensive body of literature comprising 15,465 papers published between 2000 and mid 2021 on topics related to gender equality. We identified a set of 27 topics addressed by the literature and examined their connections.

At the highest level of abstraction, it is worth noting that papers abound on the identification of issues related to gender inequalities and imbalances in the workforce and in society. Literature has thoroughly examined the (unconscious) biases, barriers, stereotypes, and discriminatory behaviors that women are facing as a result of their gender. Instead, there are much fewer papers that discuss or demonstrate effective solutions to overcome gender bias [e.g., 121 , 143 , 145 , 163 , 194 , 213 , 232 ]. This is partly due to the relative ease in studying the status quo, as opposed to studying changes in the status quo. However, we observed a shift in the more recent years towards solution seeking in this domain, which we strongly encourage future researchers to focus on. In the future, we may focus on collecting and mapping pro-active contributions to gender studies, using additional Natural Language Processing techniques, able to measure the sentiment of scientific papers [ 43 ].

All of the mainstream topics identified in our literature review are closely related, and there is a wealth of insights looking at the intersection between issues such as education and career progression or human capital and role . However, emerging topics are worthy of being furtherly explored. It would be interesting to see more work on the topic of female entrepreneurship , exploring aspects such as education , personality , governance , management and leadership . For instance, how can education support female entrepreneurship? How can self-efficacy and risk-taking behaviors be taught or enhanced? What are the differences in managerial and governance styles of female entrepreneurs? Which personality traits are associated with successful entrepreneurs? Which traits are preferred by venture capitalists and funding bodies?

The emerging topic of sustainability also deserves further attention, as our society struggles with climate change and its consequences. It would be interesting to see more research on the intersection between sustainability and entrepreneurship , looking at how female entrepreneurs are tackling sustainability issues, examining both their business models and their company governance . In addition, scholars are suggested to dig deeper into the relationship between family values and behaviors.

Moreover, it would be relevant to understand how women’s networks (social capital), or the composition and structure of social networks involving both women and men, enable them to increase their remuneration and reach top corporate positions, participate in key decision-making bodies, and have a voice in communities. Furthermore, the achievement of gender equality might significantly change firm networks and ecosystems, with important implications for their performance and survival.

Similarly, research at the nexus of (corporate) governance , career progression , compensation and female empowerment could yield useful insights–for example discussing how enterprises, institutions and countries are managed and the impact for women and other minorities. Are there specific governance structures that favor diversity and inclusion?

Lastly, we foresee an emerging stream of research pertaining how the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged women, especially in the workforce, by making gender biases more evident.

For our analysis, we considered a set of 15,465 articles downloaded from the Scopus database (which is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature). As we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies, we only considered those papers published in journals listed in the Academic Journal Guide (AJG) 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS). All the journals listed in this ranking are also indexed by Scopus. Therefore, looking at a single database (i.e., Scopus) should not be considered a limitation of our study. However, future research could consider different databases and inclusion criteria.

With our literature review, we offer researchers a comprehensive map of major gender-related research trends over the past twenty-two years. This can serve as a lens to look to the future, contributing to the achievement of SDG5. Researchers may use our study as a starting point to identify key themes addressed in the literature. In addition, our methodological approach–based on the use of the Semantic Brand Score and its webapp–could support scholars interested in reviewing other areas of research.

Supporting information

S1 text. keywords used for paper selection..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.s001

Acknowledgments

The computing resources and the related technical support used for this work have been provided by CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure and its staff. CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure is funded by ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development and by Italian and European research programmes (see http://www.cresco.enea.it/english for information).

View Article
PubMed/NCBI
Google Scholar
9. UN. Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. General Assembley 70 Session; 2015.
11. Nature. Get the Sustainable Development Goals back on track. Nature. 2020;577(January 2):7–8
37. Fronzetti Colladon A, Grippa F. Brand intelligence analytics. In: Przegalinska A, Grippa F, Gloor PA, editors. Digital Transformation of Collaboration. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland; 2020. p. 125–41. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233276 pmid:32442196
39. Griffiths TL, Steyvers M, editors. Finding scientific topics. National academy of Sciences; 2004.
40. Mimno D, Wallach H, Talley E, Leenders M, McCallum A, editors. Optimizing semantic coherence in topic models. 2011 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing; 2011.
41. Wang C, Blei DM, editors. Collaborative topic modeling for recommending scientific articles. 17th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining 2011.
46. Straka M, Straková J, editors. Tokenizing, pos tagging, lemmatizing and parsing ud 2.0 with udpipe. CoNLL 2017 Shared Task: Multilingual Parsing from Raw Text to Universal Dependencies; 2017.
49. Lu Y, Li, R., Wen K, Lu Z, editors. Automatic keyword extraction for scientific literatures using references. 2014 IEEE International Conference on Innovative Design and Manufacturing (ICIDM); 2014.
55. Roelleke T, Wang J, editors. TF-IDF uncovered. 31st Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval—SIGIR ‘08; 2008.
56. Mihalcea R, Tarau P, editors. TextRank: Bringing order into text. 2004 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing; 2004.
58. Iannone F, Ambrosino F, Bracco G, De Rosa M, Funel A, Guarnieri G, et al., editors. CRESCO ENEA HPC clusters: A working example of a multifabric GPFS Spectrum Scale layout. 2019 International Conference on High Performance Computing & Simulation (HPCS); 2019.
60. Wasserman S, Faust K. Social network analysis: Methods and applications: Cambridge University Press; 1994.
141. Williams JE, Best DL. Measuring sex stereotypes: A multination study, Rev: Sage Publications, Inc; 1990.
172. Steele CM, Aronson J. Stereotype threat and the test performance of academically successful African Americans. In: Jencks C, Phillips M, editors. The Black–White test score gap. Washington, DC: Brookings; 1998. p. 401–27

Education Shifts Power
Ending Gender Stereotypes
Feminist School
Gender at the Centre Initiative
School-related Gender-based Violence
Transform Education

10 QUESTIONS ON GENDER EQUALITY IN EDUCATION

Test your knowledge: take our quiz!

An estimated 132 million girls are out of school around the world.

Source: UNESCO (2019)

Why are so many girls out of school globally? The barriers to girls’ education are complex, and differ from community to community. Some of the gender-specific barriers to education faced by girls include harmful social and gender norms, child marriage, conflict and instability, child labour, and the cost of education.

SUGGESTED TOPICS
The Magazine
Newsletters
Managing Yourself
Managing Teams
Work-life Balance
The Big Idea
Data & Visuals
Reading Lists
Case Selections
HBR Learning
Topic Feeds
Account Settings
Email Preferences

Research: How Bias Against Women Persists in Female-Dominated Workplaces

Amber L. Stephenson,
Leanne M. Dzubinski

A look inside the ongoing barriers women face in law, health care, faith-based nonprofits, and higher education.

New research examines gender bias within four industries with more female than male workers — law, higher education, faith-based nonprofits, and health care. Having balanced or even greater numbers of women in an organization is not, by itself, changing women’s experiences of bias. Bias is built into the system and continues to operate even when more women than men are present. Leaders can use these findings to create gender-equitable practices and environments which reduce bias. First, replace competition with cooperation. Second, measure success by goals, not by time spent in the office or online. Third, implement equitable reward structures, and provide remote and flexible work with autonomy. Finally, increase transparency in decision making.

It’s been thought that once industries achieve gender balance, bias will decrease and gender gaps will close. Sometimes called the “ add women and stir ” approach, people tend to think that having more women present is all that’s needed to promote change. But simply adding women into a workplace does not change the organizational structures and systems that benefit men more than women . Our new research (to be published in a forthcoming issue of Personnel Review ) shows gender bias is still prevalent in gender-balanced and female-dominated industries.

Amy Diehl , PhD is chief information officer at Wilson College and a gender equity researcher and speaker. She is coauthor of Glass Walls: Shattering the Six Gender Bias Barriers Still Holding Women Back at Work (Rowman & Littlefield). Find her on LinkedIn at Amy-Diehl , X/Twitter @amydiehl , and visit her website at amy-diehl.com .
AS Amber L. Stephenson , PhD is an associate professor of management and director of healthcare management programs in the David D. Reh School of Business at Clarkson University. Her research focuses on the healthcare workforce, how professional identity influences attitudes and behaviors, and how women leaders experience gender bias.
LD Leanne M. Dzubinski , PhD is professor of leadership and director of the Beeson International Center at Asbury Seminary, and a prominent researcher on women in leadership. She is coauthor of Glass Walls: Shattering the Six Gender Bias Barriers Still Holding Women Back at Work (Rowman & Littlefield).

Partner Center

Frequently asked questions about gender equality

Resource date: 2005

Author: UNFPA

What is meant by gender?

The term gender refers to the economic, social and cultural attributes and opportunities associated with being male or female. In most societies, being a man or a woman is not simply a matter of different biological and physical characteristics. Men and women face different expectations about how they should dress, behave or work. Relations between men and women, whether in the family, the workplace or the public sphere, also reflect understandings of the talents, characteristics and behaviour appropriate to women and to men. Gender thus differs from sex in that it is social and cultural in nature rather than biological. Gender attributes and characteristics, encompassing, inter alia, the roles that men and women play and the expectations placed upon them, vary widely among societies and change over time. But the fact that gender attributes are socially constructed means that they are also amenable to change in ways that can make a society more just and equitable.

What is the difference between gender equity, gender equality and women’s empowerment?

Gender equity is the process of being fair to women and men. To ensure fairness, strategies and measures must often be available to compensate for women’s historical and social disadvantages that prevent women and men from otherwise operating on a level playing field. Equity leads to equality. Gender equality requires equal enjoyment by women and men of socially-valued goods, opportunities, resources and rewards. Where gender inequality exists, it is generally women who are excluded or disadvantaged in relation to decision-making and access to economic and social resources. Therefore a critical aspect of promoting gender equality is the empowerment of women, with a focus on identifying and redressing power imbalances and giving women more autonomy to manage their own lives. Gender equality does not mean that men and women become the same; only that access to opportunities and life changes is neither dependent on, nor constrained by, their sex. Achieving gender equality requires women’s empowerment to ensure that decision-making at private and public levels, and access to resources are no longer weighted in men’s favour, so that both women and men can fully participate as equal partners in productive and reproductive life.

Why is it important to take gender concerns into account in programme design and implementation?

Taking gender concerns into account when designing and implementing population and development programmes therefore is important for two reasons. First, there are differences between the roles of men and women, differences that demand different approaches. Second, there is systemic inequality between men and women. Universally, there are clear patterns of women’s inferior access to resources and opportunities. Moreover, women are systematically under-represented in decision-making processes that shape their societies and their own lives. This pattern of inequality is a constraint to the progress of any society because it limits the opportunities of one-half of its population. When women are constrained from reaching their full potential, that potential is lost to society as a whole. Programme design and implementation should endeavour to address either or both of these factors.

What is gender mainstreaming?

Gender mainstreaming is a strategy for integrating gender concerns in the analysis, formulation and monitoring of policies, programmes and projects. It is therefore a means to an end, not an end in itself; a process, not a goal. The purpose of gender mainstreaming is to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women in population and development activities. This requires addressing both the condition, as well as the position, of women and men in society. Gender mainstreaming therefore aims to strengthen the legitimacy of gender equality values by addressing known gender disparities and gaps in such areas as the division of labour between men and women; access to and control over resources; access to services, information and opportunities; and distribution of power and decision-making. UNFPA has adopted the mainstreaming of gender concerns into all population and development activities as the primary means of achieving the commitments on gender equality, equity and empowerment of women stemming from the International Conference on Population and Development.

Gender mainstreaming, as a strategy, does not preclude interventions that focus only on women or only on men. In some instances, the gender analysis that precedes programme design and development reveals severe inequalities that call for an initial strategy of sex-specific interventions. However, such sex-specific interventions should still aim to reduce identified gender disparities by focusing on equality or inequity as the objective rather than on men or women as a target group. In such a context, sex-specific interventions are still important aspects of a gender mainstreaming strategy. When implemented correctly, they should not contribute to a marginalization of men in such a critical area as access to reproductive and sexual health services. Nor should they contribute to the evaporation of gains or advances already secured by women. Rather, they should consolidate such gains that are central building blocks towards gender equality.

Why is gender equality important?

Gender equality is intrinsically linked to sustainable development and is vital to the realization of human rights for all. The overall objective of gender equality is a society in which women and men enjoy the same opportunities, rights and obligations in all spheres of life. Equality between men and women exists when both sexes are able to share equally in the distribution of power and influence; have equal opportunities for financial independence through work or through setting up businesses; enjoy equal access to education and the opportunity to develop personal ambitions, interests and talents; share responsibility for the home and children and are completely free from coercion, intimidation and gender-based violence both at work and at home.

Within the context of population and development programmes, gender equality is critical because it will enable women and men to make decisions that impact more positively on their own sexual and reproductive health as well as that of their spouses and families. Decision-making with regard to such issues as age at marriage, timing of births, use of contraception, and recourse to harmful practices (such as female genital cutting) stands to be improved with the achievement of gender equality.

However it is important to acknowledge that where gender inequality exists, it is generally women who are excluded or disadvantaged in relation to decision-making and access to economic and social resources. Therefore a critical aspect of promoting gender equality is the empowerment of women, with a focus on identifying and redressing power imbalances and giving women more autonomy to manage their own lives. This would enable them to make decisions and take actions to achieve and maintain their own reproductive and sexual health. Gender equality and women’s empowerment do not mean that men and women become the same; only that access to opportunities and life changes is neither dependent on, nor constrained by, their sex.

Is gender equality a concern for men?

The achievement of gender equality implies changes for both men and women. More equitable relationships will need to be based on a redefinition of the rights and responsibilities of women and men in all spheres of life, including the family, the workplace and the society at large. It is therefore crucial not to overlook gender as an aspect of men’s social identity. This fact is, indeed, often overlooked, because the tendency is to consider male characteristics and attributes as the norm, and those of women as a variation of the norm.

But the lives of men are just as strongly influenced by gender as those of women. Societal norms and conceptions of masculinity and expectations of men as leaders, husbands or sons create demands on men and shape their behaviour. Men are too often expected to concentrate on the material needs of their families, rather than on the nurturing and caring roles assigned to women. Socialization in the family and later in schools promotes risk-taking behaviour among young men, and this is often reinforced through peer pressure and media stereotypes. So the lifestyles that men’s roles demand often result in their being more exposed to greater risks of morbidity and mortality than women. These risks include ones relating to accidents, violence and alcohol consumption.

Men also have the right to assume a more nurturing role, and opportunities for them to do so should be promoted. Equally, however, men have responsibilities in regard to child health and to their own and their partners’ sexual and reproductive health. Addressing these rights and responsibilities entails recognizing men’s specific health problems, as well as their needs and the conditions that shape them. The adoption of a gender perspective is an important first step; it reveals that there are disadvantages and costs to men accruing from patterns of gender difference. It also underscores that gender equality is concerned not only with the roles, responsibilities and needs of women and men, but also with the interrelationships between them.

We use cookies and other identifiers to help improve your online experience. By using our website you agree to this, see our cookie policy

Recent Articles

book cover of Feminism in the United States

New book from Alison Dahl Crossley

Artist’s Salon: Hannah Zeavin on how transference, boundary violations, and feminism have shaped psychoanalysis

The attacks on DEI: white anxieties, moral panics, and material impacts

Economic Inequality by Gender

How big are the inequalities in pay, jobs, and wealth between men and women? What causes these differences?

By: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina , Joe Hasell and Max Roser

This page was first published in March 2018 and last revised in March 2024.

On this page, you can find writing, visualizations, and data on how big the inequalities in pay, jobs, and wealth are between men and women, how they have changed over time, and what may be causing them

Although economic gender inequalities remain common and large, they are today smaller than they used to be some decades ago.

Women's Employment

How does women’s labor force participation differ across countries? How has it changed over time? What is behind these differences and changes?

Women’s Rights

How has the protection of women’s rights changed over time? How does it differ across countries? Explore global data and research on women’s rights.

Maternal Mortality

What could be more tragic than a mother losing her life in the moment that she is giving birth to her newborn? Why are mothers dying and what can be done to prevent these deaths?

See all interactive charts on economic inequality by gender ↓

How does the gender pay gap look like across countries and over time?

The 'gender pay gap' comes up often in political debates , policy reports , and everyday news . But what is it? What does it tell us? Is it different from country to country? How does it change over time?

Here we try to answer these questions, providing an empirical overview of the gender pay gap across countries and over time.

The gender pay gap measures inequality but not necessarily discrimination

The gender pay gap (or the gender wage gap) is a metric that tells us the difference in pay (or wages, or income) between women and men. It's a measure of inequality and captures a concept that is broader than the concept of equal pay for equal work.

Differences in pay between men and women capture differences along many possible dimensions, including worker education, experience, and occupation. When the gender pay gap is calculated by comparing all male workers to all female workers – irrespective of differences along these additional dimensions – the result is the 'raw' or 'unadjusted' pay gap. On the contrary, when the gap is calculated after accounting for underlying differences in education, experience, etc., then the result is the 'adjusted' pay gap.

Discrimination in hiring practices can exist in the absence of pay gaps – for example, if women know they will be treated unfairly and hence choose not to participate in the labor market. Similarly, it is possible to observe large pay gaps in the absence of discrimination in hiring practices – for example, if women get fair treatment but apply for lower-paid jobs.

The implication is that observing differences in pay between men and women is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove discrimination in the workplace. Both discrimination and inequality are important. But they are not the same.

In most countries, there is a substantial gender pay gap

Cross-country data on the gender pay gap is patchy, but the most complete source in terms of coverage is the United Nation's International Labour Organization (ILO). The visualization here presents this data. You can add observations by clicking on the option 'add country' at the bottom of the chart.

The estimates shown here correspond to differences between the average hourly earnings of men and women (expressed as a percentage of average hourly earnings of men), and cover all workers irrespective of whether they work full-time or part-time. 1

As we can see: (i) in most countries the gap is positive – women earn less than men, and (ii) there are large differences in the size of this gap across countries. 2

In most countries, the gender pay gap has decreased in the last couple of decades

How is the gender pay gap changing over time? To answer this question, let's consider this chart showing available estimates from the OECD. These estimates include OECD member states, as well as some other non-member countries, and they are the longest available series of cross-country data on the gender pay gap that we are aware of.

Here we see that the gap is large in most OECD countries, but it has been going down in the last couple of decades. In some cases the reduction is remarkable. In the United States, for example, the gap declined by more than half.

These estimates are not directly comparable to those from the ILO, because the pay gap is measured slightly differently here: The OECD estimates refer to percent differences in median earnings (i.e. the gap here captures differences between men and women in the middle of the earnings distribution), and they cover only full-time employees and self-employed workers (i.e. the gap here excludes disparities that arise from differences in hourly wages for part-time and full-time workers).

However, the ILO data shows similar trends.

The conclusion is that in most countries with available data, the gender pay gap has decreased in the last couple of decades.

The gender pay gap is larger for older workers

The United States Census Bureau defines the pay gap as the ratio between median wages – that is, they measure the gap by calculating the wages of men and women at the middle of the earnings distribution, and dividing them.

By this measure, the gender wage gap is expressed as a percent (median earnings of women as a share of median earnings of men) and it is always positive. Here, values below 100% mean that women earn less than men, while values above 100% mean that women earn more. Values closer to 100% reflect a lower gap.

The next chart shows available estimates of this metric for full-time workers in the US, by age group.

First, we see that the series trends upwards, meaning the gap has been shrinking in the last couple of decades. Secondly, we see that there are important differences by age.

The second point is crucial to understanding the gender pay gap: the gap is a statistic that changes during the life of a worker. In most rich countries, it’s small when formal education ends and employment begins, and it increases with age. As we discuss in our analysis of the determinants below, the gender pay gap tends to increase when women marry and when/if they have children.

The gender pay gap is smaller in middle-income countries – which tend to be countries with low labor force participation of women

The chart here plots available ILO estimates on the gender pay gap against GDP per capita. As we can see there is a weak positive correlation between GDP per capita and the gender pay gap. However, the chart shows that the relationship is not really linear. Actually, middle-income countries tend to have the smallest pay gap.

The fact that middle-income countries have low gender wage gaps is, to a large extent, the result of selection of women into employment . Olivetti and Petrongolo (2008) explain it as follows: “[I]f women who are employed tend to have relatively high‐wage characteristics, low female employment rates may become consistent with low gender wage gaps simply because low‐wage women would not feature in the observed wage distribution.” 3

Olivetti and Petrongolo (2008) show that this pattern holds in the data: unadjusted gender wage gaps across countries tend to be negatively correlated with gender employment gaps. That is, the gender pay gaps tend to be smaller where relatively fewer women participate in the labor force .

So, rather than reflect greater equality, the lower wage gaps observed in some countries could indicate that only women with certain characteristics – for instance, with no husband or children – are entering the workforce.

Why is there a gender pay gap?

In almost all countries, if you compare the wages of men and women you find that women tend to earn less than men. These inequalities have been narrowing across the world. In particular, most high-income countries have seen sizeable reductions in the gender pay gap over the last couple of decades.

How did these reductions come about and why do substantial gaps remain?

Before we get into the details, here is a preview of the main points.

An important part of the reduction in the gender pay gap in rich countries over the last decades is due to a historical narrowing, and often even reversal of the education gap between men and women.
Today, education is relatively unimportant in explaining the remaining gender pay gap in rich countries. In contrast, the characteristics of the jobs that women tend to do, remain important contributing factors.
The gender pay gap is not a direct metric of discrimination. However, evidence from different contexts suggests discrimination is indeed important to understand the gender pay gap. Similarly, social norms affecting the gender distribution of labor are important determinants of wage inequality.
On the other hand, the available evidence suggests differences in psychological attributes and non-cognitive skills are at best modest factors contributing to the gender pay gap.

Differences in human capital

The adjusted pay gap.

Differences in earnings between men and women capture differences across many possible dimensions, including education, experience, and occupation.

For example, if we consider that more educated people tend to have higher earnings, it is natural to expect that the narrowing of the pay gap across the world can be partly explained by the fact that women have been catching up with men in terms of educational attainment, in particular years of schooling.

Indeed, since differences in education partly contribute to explaining differences in wages, it is common to distinguish between 'unadjusted' and 'adjusted' pay differences.

When the gender pay gap is calculated by comparing all male and female workers, irrespective of differences in worker characteristics, the result is the raw or unadjusted pay gap. In contrast to this, when the gap is calculated after accounting for underlying differences in education, experience, and other factors that matter for the pay gap, then the result is the adjusted pay gap.

The idea of the adjusted pay gap is to make comparisons within groups of workers with roughly similar jobs, tenure, and education. This allows us to tease out the extent to which different factors contribute to observed inequalities.

The chart here, from Blau and Kahn (2017) shows the evolution of the adjusted and unadjusted gender pay gap in the US. 4

More precisely, the chart shows the evolution of female-to-male wage ratios in three different scenarios: (i) Unadjusted; (ii) Adjusted, controlling for gender differences in human capital, i.e. education and experience; and (iii) Adjusted, controlling for a full range of covariates, including education, experience, job industry, and occupation, among others. The difference between 100% and the full specification (the green bars) is the “unexplained” residual. 5

Several points stand out here.

First, the unadjusted gender pay gap in the US shrunk over this period. This is evident from the fact that the blue bars are closer to 100% in 2010 than in 1980.
Second, if we focus on groups of workers with roughly similar jobs, tenure, and education, we also see a narrowing. The adjusted gender pay gap has shrunk.
Third, we can see that education and experience used to help explain a very large part of the pay gap in 1980, but this changed substantially in the decades that followed. This third point follows from the fact that the difference between the blue and red bars was much larger in 1980 than in 2010.
And fourth, the green bars grew substantially in the 1980s, but stayed fairly constant thereafter. In other words: Most of the convergence in earnings occurred during the 1980s, a decade in which the "unexplained" gap shrunk substantially.

Education and experience have become much less important in explaining gender differences in wages in the US

The next chart shows a breakdown of the adjusted gender pay gaps in the US, factor by factor, in 1980 and 2010.

When comparing the contributing factors in 1980 and 2010, we see that education and work experience have become much less important in explaining gender differences in wages over time, while occupation and industry have become more important. 6

In this chart we can also see that the 'unexplained' residual has gone down. This means the observable characteristics of workers and their jobs explain wage differences better today than a couple of decades ago. At first sight, this seems like good news – it suggests that today there is less discrimination, in the sense that differences in earnings are today much more readily explained by differences in 'productivity' factors. But is this really the case?

The unexplained residual may include aspects of unmeasured productivity (i.e. unobservable worker characteristics that could not be accounted for in the study), while the "explained" factors may themselves be vehicles of discrimination.

For example, suppose that women are indeed discriminated against, and they find it hard to get hired for certain jobs simply because of their sex. This would mean that in the adjusted specification, we would see that occupation and industry are important contributing factors – but that is precisely because discrimination is embedded in occupational differences!

Hence, while the unexplained residual gives us a first-order approximation of what is going on, we need much more detailed data and analysis in order to say something definitive about the role of discrimination in observed pay differences.

Gender pay differences around the world are better explained by occupation than by education

The set of three maps here, taken from the World Development Report (2012) , shows that today gender pay differences are much better explained by occupation than by education. This is consistent with the point already made above using data for the US: as education expanded radically over the last few decades, human capital has become much less important in explaining gender differences in wages.

Justin Sandefur at the Center for Global Development shows that education also fails to explain wage gaps if we include workers with zero income (i.e. if we decompose the wage gap after including people who are not employed).

Looking beyond worker characteristics

Job flexibility.

All over the world women tend to do more unpaid care work at home than men – and women tend to be overrepresented in low-paying jobs where they have the flexibility required to attend to these additional responsibilities.

The most important evidence regarding this link between the gender pay gap and job flexibility is presented and discussed by Claudia Goldin in the article ' A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter ', where she digs deep into the data from the US. 8 There are some key lessons that apply both to rich and non-rich countries.

Goldin shows that when one looks at the data on occupational choice in some detail, it becomes clear that women disproportionately seek jobs, including full-time jobs, that tend to be compatible with childrearing and other family responsibilities. In other words, women, more than men, are expected to have temporal flexibility in their jobs. Things like shifting hours of work and rearranging shifts to accommodate emergencies at home. And these are jobs with lower earnings per hour, even when the total number of hours worked is the same.

The importance of job flexibility in this context is very clearly illustrated by the fact that, over the last couple of decades, women in the US increased their participation and remuneration in only some fields. In a recent paper, Goldin and Katz (2016) show that pharmacy became a highly remunerated female-majority profession with a small gender earnings gap in the US, at the same time as pharmacies went through substantial technological changes that made flexible jobs in the field more productive (e.g. computer systems that increased the substitutability among pharmacists). 9

The chart here shows how quickly female wages increased in pharmacy, relative to other professions, over the last few decades in the US.

The motherhood penalty

Closely related to job flexibility and occupational choice is the issue of work interruptions due to motherhood. On this front, there is again a great deal of evidence in support of the so-called 'motherhood penalty'.

Lundborg, Plug, and Rasmussen (2017) provide evidence from Denmark – more specifically, Danish women who sought medical help in achieving pregnancy. 10

By tracking women’s fertility and employment status through detailed periodic surveys, these researchers were able to establish that women who had a successful in vitro fertilization treatment, ended up having lower earnings down the line than similar women who, by chance, were unsuccessfully treated.

Lundborg, Plug, and Rasmussen summarise their findings as follows: "Our main finding is that women who are successfully treated by [in vitro fertilization] earn persistently less because of having children. We explain the decline in annual earnings by women working less when children are young and getting paid less when children are older. We explain the decline in hourly earnings, which is often referred to as the motherhood penalty, by women moving to lower-paid jobs that are closer to home."

The fact that the motherhood penalty is indeed about ‘motherhood’ and not ‘parenthood’, is supported by further evidence.

A recent study , also from Denmark, tracked men and women over the period 1980-2013 and found that after the first child, women’s earnings sharply dropped and never fully recovered. But this was not the case for men with children, nor the case for women without children.

These patterns are shown in the chart here. The first panel shows the trend in earnings for Danish women with and without children. The second panel shows the same comparison for Danish men.

Note that these two examples are from Denmark – a country that ranks high on gender equality measures and where there are legal guarantees requiring that a woman can return to the same job after taking time to give birth.

This shows that, although family-friendly policies contribute to improving female labor force participation and reducing the gender pay gap , they are only part of the solution. Even when there is generous paid leave and subsidized childcare, as long as mothers disproportionately take additional work at home after having children, inequities in pay are likely to remain.

Ability, personality, and social norms

The discussion so far has emphasized the importance of job characteristics and occupational choice in explaining the gender pay gap. This leads to obvious questions: What determines the systematic gender differences in occupational choice? What makes women seek job flexibility and take a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work?

One argument usually put forward is that, to the extent that biological differences in preferences and abilities underpin gender roles, they are the main factors explaining the gender pay gap. In their review of the evidence, Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn (2017) show that there is limited empirical support for this argument. 11

To be clear, yes, there is evidence supporting the fact that men and women differ in some key attributes that may affect labor market outcomes. For example, standardized tests show that there are statistical gender gaps in maths scores in some countries ; and experiments show that women avoid more salary negotiations , and they often show particular predisposition to accept and receive requests for tasks with low promotion potential . However, these observed differences are far from being biologically fixed – 'gendering' begins early in life and the evidence shows that preferences and skills are highly malleable. You can influence tastes, and you can certainly teach people to tolerate risk, to do maths, or to negotiate salaries.

What's more, independently of where they come from, Blau and Kahn show that these empirically observed differences can typically only account for a modest portion of the gender pay gap.

In contrast, the evidence does suggest that social norms and culture, which in turn affect preferences, behavior, and incentives to foster specific skills, are key factors in understanding gender differences in labor force participation and wages. You can read more about this farther below.

Discrimination and bias

Independently of the exact origin of the unequal distribution of gender roles, it is clear that our recent and even current practices show that these roles persist with the help of institutional enforcement. Goldin (1988), for instance, examines past prohibitions against the training and employment of married women in the US. She touches on some well-known restrictions, such as those against the training and employment of women as doctors and lawyers, before focusing on the lesser known but even more impactful 'marriage bars' that arose in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These work prohibitions are important because they applied to teaching and clerical jobs – occupations that would become the most commonly held among married women after 1950. Around the time the US entered World War II, it is estimated that 87% of all school boards would not hire a married woman and 70% would not retain an unmarried woman who married. 12

The map here highlights that to this day, explicit barriers limit the extent to which women are allowed to do the same jobs as men in some countries. 13

However, even after explicit barriers are lifted and legal protections put in place, discrimination and bias can persist in less overt ways. Goldin and Rouse (2000), for example, look at the adoption of "blind" auditions by orchestras and show that by using a screen to conceal the identity of a candidate, impartial hiring practices increased the number of women in orchestras by 25% between 1970 and 1996. 14

Many other studies have found similar evidence of bias in different labor market contexts. Biases also operate in other spheres of life with strong knock-on effects on labor market outcomes. For example, at the end of World War II only 18% of people in the US thought that a wife should work if her husband was able to support her . This obviously circles back to our earlier point about social norms. 15

Strategies for reducing the gender pay gap

In many countries wage inequality between men and women can be reduced by improving the education of women. However, in many countries, gender gaps in education have been closed and we still have large gender inequalities in the workforce. What else can be done?

An obvious alternative is fighting discrimination. But the evidence presented above shows that this is not enough. Public policy and management changes on the firm level matter too: Family-friendly labor-market policies may help. For example, maternity leave coverage can contribute by raising women’s retention over the period of childbirth, which in turn raises women’s wages through the maintenance of work experience and job tenure. 16

Similarly, early education and childcare can increase the labor force participation of women — and reduce gender pay gaps — by alleviating the unpaid care work undertaken by mothers. 17

Additionally, the experience of women's historical advance in specific professions (e.g. pharmacists in the US), suggests that the gender pay gap could also be considerably reduced if firms did not have the incentive to disproportionately reward workers who work long hours, and fixed, non-flexible schedules. 18

Changing these incentives is of course difficult because it requires reorganizing the workplace. But it is likely to have a large impact on gender inequality, particularly in countries where other measures are already in place. 19

Implementing these strategies can have a positive self-reinforcing effect. For example, family-friendly labor-market policies that lead to higher labor-force attachment and salaries for women will raise the returns on women's investment in education – so women in future generations will be more likely to invest in education, which will also help narrow gender gaps in labor market outcomes down the line. 20

Nevertheless, powerful as these strategies may be, they are only part of the solution. Social norms and culture remain at the heart of family choices and the gender distribution of labor. Achieving equality in opportunities requires ensuring that we change the norms and stereotypes that limit the set of choices available both to men and women. It is difficult, but as the next section shows, social norms can be changed, too.

How well do biological differences explain the gender pay gap?

Across the world, women tend to take on more family responsibilities than men. As a result, women tend to be overrepresented in low-paying jobs where they are more likely to have the flexibility required to attend to these additional responsibilities.

These two facts – documented above – are often used to claim that, since men and women tend to be endowed with different tastes and talents, it follows that most of the observed gender differences in wages stem from biological sex differences. But what’s the broader evidence for these claims?

In a nutshell, here's what the research and data shows:

There is evidence supporting the fact that statistically speaking, men and women tend to differ in some key aspects, including psychological attributes that may affect labor-market outcomes.
There is no consensus on the exact weight that nurture and nature have in determining these differences, but whatever the exact weight, the evidence does show that these attributes are strongly malleable.
Regardless of the origin, these differences can only explain a modest part of the gender pay gap.

Some context regarding the gender distribution of labor

Before we get into the discussion of whether biological attributes explain wage differences via gender roles, let's get some perspective on the gender distribution of work.

The following chart shows, by country, the female-to-male ratio of time devoted to unpaid care work, including tasks like taking care of children at home, housework, or doing community work. As can be seen, all over the world there is a radical unbalance in the gender distribution of labor – everywhere women take a disproportionate amount of unpaid work.

This is of course closely related to the fact that in most countries there are gender gaps in labor force participation and wages .

“Boys are better at maths”

Differences in biological attributes that determine our ability to develop 'hard skills', such as maths, are often argued to be at the heart of the gender pay gap. 21 Do large gender differences in maths skills really exist? If so, is this because of differences in the attributes we are born with?

Let's look at the data.

Are boys better in the mathematics section of the PISA standardized test ? One could argue that looking at top scores is more relevant here since top scores are more likely to determine gaps in future professional trajectories – for example, gaps in access to 'STEM degrees' at the university level.

The chart shows the share of male and female test-takers scoring at the highest level on the PISA test (that's level 6). As we can see, most countries lie above the diagonal line marking gender parity; so yes, achieving high scores in maths tends to be more common among boys than girls. However, there is huge cross-country variation – the differences between countries are much larger than the differences between the sexes. And in many countries, the gap is effectively inexistent. 22

Similarly, researchers have found that within countries there is also large geographic variation in gender gaps in test scores. So clearly these gaps in mathematical ability do not seem to be fully determined by biological endowments. 23

Indeed, research looking at the PISA cross-country results suggests that improved social conditions for women are related to improved math performance by girls. 24

Not only do statistical gaps in test scores vary substantially across societies – they also vary substantially across time. This suggests that social factors play a large role in explaining differences between the sexes.

In the US, for example, the gender gap in mathematics has narrowed in recent decades. 25 And this narrowing took place as high school curricula of boys and girls became more similar. The following chart shows this: In the US boys in 1957 took far more math and science courses than did girls; but by 1992 there was virtual parity in almost all science and math courses.

More importantly for the question at hand, gender gaps in 'hard skills' are not large enough to explain the gender gaps in earnings. In their review of the evidence, Blau and Kahn (2017) concludes that gaps in test scores in the US are too small to explain much of the gender pay at any point in time. 26

So, taken together, the evidence suggests that statistical gaps in maths test scores are both relatively small and heavily influenced by social and environmental factors.

“It’s about personality”

Biological differences in tastes (e.g. preferences for 'people' over 'things'), psychological attributes (e.g. 'risk aversion'), and soft skills (e.g. the ability to get along with others) are also often argued to be at the heart of the gender pay gap.

There are hundreds of studies trying to establish whether there are gender differences in preferences, personality traits, and 'soft skills'. The quality and general relevance (i.e. the internal and external validity) of these studies is the subject of much discussion, as illustrated in the recent debate that ensued from the Google Memo affair .

A recent article from the 'Heterodox Academy ', which was produced specifically in the context of the Google Memo, provides a fantastic overview of the evidence on this topic and the key points of contention among scholars.

For the purpose of this blog post, let's focus on the review of the evidence presented in Blau and Kahn (2017) – their review is particularly helpful because they focus on gender differences in the context of labor markets.

Blau and Kahn point out that, yes, researchers have found statistical differences between men and women that are important in the context of labor-market outcomes. For example, studies have found statistical gender differences in 'people skills' (i.e. ability to listen, communicate, and relate to others). Similarly, experimental studies have found that women more often avoid salary negotiations , and they often show a particular predisposition to accept and receive requests for tasks with low promotability. But are the origins of these differences mainly biological or are they social? And are they strong enough to explain pay gaps?

The available evidence here suggests these factors can only explain a relatively small fraction of the observed differences in wages. 27 And they are anyway far from being purely biological – preferences and skills are highly malleable and 'gendering' begins early in life. 28

Here is a concrete example: Leibbrandt and List (2015) did an experiment in which they assessed how men and women reacted to job advertisements. 29 They found that although men were more likely to negotiate than women when there was no explicit statement that wages were negotiable, the gender difference disappeared and even reversed when it was explicitly stated that wages were negotiable. This suggests that it is not as much about 'talent', as it is about norms and rules.

“A man should earn more than his wife”

The experiment in which researchers found that gender differences in negotiation attitudes disappeared when it was explicitly stated that wages were negotiable, emphasizes the important role that social norms and culture play in labor-market outcomes.

These concepts may seem abstract: What do social norms and culture actually look like in the context of the gender pay gap?

The reproduction of stereotypes through everyday positive enforcement can be seen in a range of aspects: A study analyzing 124 prime-time television programs in the US found that female characters continue to inhabit interpersonal roles with romance, family, and friends, while male characters enact work-related roles. 30 In the realm of children’s books, a study of 5,618 books found that compared to females, males are represented nearly twice as often in titles and 1.6 times as often as central characters. 31 Qualitative research shows that even in the home, parents are often enforcers of gender norms – especially when it comes to fathers endorsing masculinity in male children. 32

Of particular relevance in the context of labor markets, social norms also often take the form of specific behavioral prescriptions such as "a man should earn more than his wife".

The following chart depicts the distribution of the share of the household income earned by the wife, across married couples in the US.

Consistent with the idea that "a man should earn more than his wife", the data shows a sharp drop at 0.5, the point where the wife starts to earn more than the husband.

Distribution of income share earned by the wife across married couples in the US – Bertrand, Kamenica, and Pan (2015) 33

$Line chart of the fraction of married couples depending on the income share earned by the wife. The fraction drops as the share crosses 0.5.$

This is the result of two factors. First, it is about the matching of men and women before they marry – 'matches' in which the woman has higher earning potential are less common. Second, it is a result of choices after marriage – the researchers show that married women with higher earning potential than their husbands often stay out of the labor force, or take 'below-potential' jobs. 34

The authors of the study from which this chart is taken explored the data in more detail and found that in couples where the wife earns more than the husband, the wife spends more time on household chores, so the gender gap in unpaid care work is even larger; and these couples are also less satisfied with their marriage and are more likely to divorce than couples where the wife earns less than the husband.

The empirical exploration in this study highlights the remarkable power that gender norms and identity have on labor-market outcomes.

Why do gender norms and identity matter?

Does it actually matter if social norms and culture are important determinants of gender roles and labor-market outcomes? Are social norms in our contemporary societies really less fixed than biological traits?

The available research suggests that the answers to these questions are yes and yes. There is evidence that social norms can be actively and rapidly changed.

Here is a concrete example: Jensen and Oster (2009) find that the introduction of cable television in India led to a significant decrease in the reported acceptability of domestic violence towards women and son preference, as well as increases in women’s autonomy and decreases in fertility. 35

Of course, TV is a small aspect of all the big things that matter for social norms. But this study is important for the discussion because it is hard to study how social norms can be changed. TV introduction is a rare opportunity to see how a group that is exposed to a driver of social change actually changes.

As Jensen and Oster point out, most popular cable TV shows in India feature urban settings where lifestyles differ radically from those in rural areas. For example, many female characters on popular soap operas have more education, marry later, and have smaller families than most women in rural areas. And, similarly, many female characters in these tv shows are featured working outside the home as professionals, running businesses, or are shown in other positions of authority.

The bar chart below shows how cable access changed attitudes toward the self-reported preference for their child to be a son. As the authors note, "reported desire for the next child to be a son is relatively unchanged in areas with no change in cable status, but it decreases sharply between 2001 and 2002 for villages that get cable in 2002, and between 2002 and 2003 (but notably not between 2001 and 2002) for those that get cable in 2003. For both measures of attitudes, the changes are large and striking, and correspond closely to the timing of introduction of cable."

Bar chart of the share of Indian households who report wanting their next child to be a boy in 2001, 2002, and 2003, depending on whether they had cable TV in 2001, got cable TV in 2002 or 2003, or never had cable TV. The preference for a son declined for households in the year they got cable TV.

To conclude: The evidence suggests that biological differences are not a key driver of gender inequality in labor-market outcomes; while social norms and culture – which in turn affect preferences, behavior, and incentives to foster specific skills – are very important.

This matters for policy because social norms are not fixed – they can be influenced in a number of ways, including through intergenerational learning processes, exposure to alternative norms, and activism such as that which propelled the women's movement. 36

How are women represented across jobs?

Representation of women at the top of the income distribution.

Despite having fallen in recent decades, there remains a substantial pay gap between the average wages of men and women .

But what does gender inequality look like if we focus on the very top of the income distribution? Do we find any evidence of the so-called 'glass ceiling' preventing women from reaching the top? How did this change over time?

Answers to these questions are found in the work of Atkinson, Casarico and Voitchovsky (2018). Using tax records, they investigated the incomes of women and men separately across nine high-income countries. As such, they were restricted to those countries in which taxes are collected on an individual basis, rather than as couples. 37

In addition to wages they also take into account income from investments and self-employment.

Whilst investment income tends to make up a larger share of the total income of rich individuals in general, the authors found this to be particularly marked in the case of women in top-income groups.

The two charts present the key figures from the study.

One chart shows the proportion of women out of all individuals falling into the top 10%, 1%, and 0.1% of the income distribution. The open circle represents the share of women in the top income brackets back in 2000; the closed circle shows the latest data, which is from 2013.

The other chart shows the data over time for individual countries. You can explore data for other countries using the 'Change country' button on the chart.

The two charts allow us to answer the initial questions:

Women are greatly under-represented in top income groups – they make up much less than 50% across each of the nine countries. Within the top 1% women account for around 20% and there is surprisingly little variation across countries.
The proportion of women is lower the higher you look up the income distribution. In the top 10% up to every third income-earner is a woman; in the top 0.1% only every fifth or tenth person is a woman.
The trend is the same in all countries of this study: Women are now better represented in all top-income groups than they were in 2000.
But improvements have generally been more limited at the very top. With the exception of Australia, we see a much smaller increase in the share of women amongst the top 0.1% than amongst the top 10%.

Overall, despite recent inroads, we continue to see remarkably few women making it to the top of the income distribution today.

Representation of women in management positions

The chart here plots the proportion of women in senior and middle management positions around the world. It shows that women all over the world are underrepresented in high-profile jobs, which tend to be better paid.

The next chart provides an alternative perspective on the same issue. Here we show the share of firms that have a woman as manager. We highlight world regions by default, but you can remove them and add specific countries.

As we can see, all over the world firms tend to be managed by men. And, globally, only about 18% of firms have a female manager.

Firms with female managers tend to be different to firms with male managers. For example, firms with female managers tend to also be firms with more female workers .

Representation of women in low-paying jobs

Above we show that women all over the world are underrepresented in high-profile jobs, which tend to be better paid. As it turns out, in many countries women are at the same time overrepresented in low-paying jobs.

This is shown in the chart here, where 'low-pay' refers to workers earning less than two-thirds of the median (i.e. the middle) of the earnings distribution.

A share above 50% implies that women are 'overrepresented', in the sense that among those with low wages, there are more women than men.

The fact that women in rich countries are overrepresented in the bottom of the income distribution goes together with the fact that working women in these countries are overrepresented in low-paying occupations. The chart shows this for the US.

How much control do women have over household resources?

Women often have no control over their personal earned income.

The next chart plots cross-country estimates of the share of women who are not involved in decisions about their own income. The line shows national averages, while the dots show averages for rich and poor households (i.e. averages for women in households within the top and bottom quintiles of the corresponding national income distribution).

As we can see, in many countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, a large fraction of women are not involved in household decisions about spending their personal earned income. And this pattern is stronger among low-income households within low-income countries.

Percentage of women not involved in decisions about their own income – World Development Report (2012) 39

In many countries, women have limited influence over important household decisions

Above we focus on whether women get to choose how their own personal income is spent. Now we look at women's influence over total household income.

In this chart, we plot the share of currently married women who report having a say in major household purchase decisions, against national GDP per capita.

We see that in many countries, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, an important number of women have limited influence over major spending decisions.

The chart above shows that women’s control over household spending tends to be greater in richer countries. In the next chart, we show that this correlation also holds within countries: Women’s control is greater in wealthier households. Household wealth is shown by the quintile in the wealth distribution on the x-axis – the poorest households are in the lowest quintiles (Q1) on the left.

There are many factors at play here, and it's important to bear in mind that this correlation partly captures the fact that richer households enjoy greater discretionary income beyond levels required to cover basic expenditure, while at the same time, in richer households women often have greater agency via access to broader networks as well as higher personal assets and incomes.

Land ownership is more often in the hands of men

Economic inequalities between men and women manifest themselves not only in terms of wages earned but also in terms of assets owned. For example, as the chart shows, in nearly all low and middle-income countries with data, men are more likely to own land than women.

Women's lack of control over important household assets, such as land, can be a critical problem in case of divorce or the husband’s death.

Closely related to the issue of land ownership is the fact that in several countries women do not have the same rights to property as men. These countries are highlighted in the map. 40

Gender-equal inheritance systems have been adopted in most, but not all countries

Inheritance is one of the main mechanisms for the accumulation of assets. In the map, we provide an overview of the countries that do and do not have gender-equal inheritance systems.

If you move the slider to 1920, you will see that while gender-equal inheritance systems were very rare in the early 20th century, today they are much more common. And still, despite the progress achieved, in many countries, notably in North Africa and the Middle East, women and girls still have fewer inheritance rights than men and boys.

Gender differences in access to productive inputs are often large

Above we show that there are large gender gaps in land ownership across low-income countries. Here we show that there are also large gaps in terms of access to borrowed capital.

The chart shows the percentage of men and women who report borrowing any money in the past 12 months to start, operate, or expand a farm or business.

As we can see, almost everywhere, including in many rich countries, women are less likely to obtain borrowed capital for productive purposes.

This can have large knock-on effects: in agriculture and entrepreneurship, gender differences in access to productive inputs, including land and credit, can lead to gaps in earnings via lower productivity.

Indeed, studies have found that, when statistical gender differences in agricultural productivity exist, they often disappear when access to and use of productive inputs are taken into account. 41

Interactive Charts on Economic Inequality by Gender

Acknowledgements.

We thank Sandra Tzvetkova and Diana Beltekian for their great research assistance.

There are some exceptions to this definition. In particular, sometimes self-employed workers, or part-time workers are excluded.

This measure can also be negative. This means that, on an hourly basis, men earn on average less than women. It is the case for some countries, such as Malaysia.

Olivetti, C., & Petrongolo, B. (2008). Unequal pay or unequal employment? A cross-country analysis of gender gaps. Journal of Labor Economics, 26(4), 621-654.

Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn. 2017. " The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations. " Journal of Economic Literature, 55(3): 789-865.

For each specification, Blau and Kahn (2017) perform regression analyses on data from the PSID (the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics), which includes information on labor-market experience and considers men and women ages 25-64 who were full-time, non-farm, wage and salary workers.

In 2010, unionization and education show negative values; this reflects the fact that women have surpassed men in educational attainment, and unionization in the US has been in general decline with a greater effect on men.

The full source is: World Development Report (2012) Gender Equality and Development , World Bank.

Goldin, C. (2014). A grand gender convergence: Its last chapter. The American Economic Review, 104(4), 1091-1119.

Goldin, C., & Katz, L. F. (2016). A most egalitarian profession: pharmacy and the evolution of a family-friendly occupation. Journal of Labor Economics, 34(3), 705-746.

Lundborg, P., Plug, E., & Rasmussen, A. W. (2017). Can Women Have Children and a Career? IV Evidence from IVF Treatments. American Economic Review, 107(6), 1611-1637.

Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn. 2017. " The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations. " Journal of Economic Literature, 55(3): 789-865

Goldin, C. (1988). Marriage bars: Discrimination against married women workers, 1920's to 1950's .

The data in this map, which comes from the World Bank's World Development Indicators, provides a measure of whether there are any specific jobs that women are not allowed to perform. So, for example, a country might be coded as "No" if women are only allowed to work in certain jobs within the mining industry, such as health care professionals within mines, but not as miners.

Goldin, C., & Rouse, C. (2000). Orchestrating impartiality: The impact of" blind" auditions on female musicians. American Economic Review , 90(4), 715-741.

Blau and Kahn (2017) provide a whole list of experimental studies that have found labor-market discrimination. Another early example is from Neumark et al. (1996), who look at discrimination in restaurants. In this case, male and female pseudo-job-seekers were given similar CVs to apply for jobs waiting on tables at the same set of restaurants in Philadelphia. The results showed discrimination against women in high-priced restaurants.

The full reference of this study is Neumark, D., Bank, R. J., & Van Nort, K. D. (1996). Sex discrimination in restaurant hiring: An audit study. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 111(3), 915-941.

Waldfogel, J. (1998). Understanding the "family gap" in pay for women with children. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12(1), 137-156.

Olivetti, C., & Petrongolo, B. (2017). The economic consequences of family policies: lessons from a century of legislation in high-income countries. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(1), 205-230.

As we show above, in several nations, such as Sweden and Denmark, a “motherhood penalty” in earnings exists, even though these nations have generous family policies, including paid family leave and subsidized child care.

For a discussion of this mechanism, see page 814, Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn. 2017. The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations. Journal of Economic Literature, 55(3): 789-865.

Hard skills are abilities that can be defined and measured, such as writing, reading, or doing maths. By contrast, soft skills are less tangible and harder to measure and quantify.

Also importantly: If we focus on gender differences for average , rather than top students, we find that there is not even a clear tendency in favor of boys. ( This interactive chart compares PISA average math scores for boys and girls ).

For more on this see Pope, D. G., & Sydnor, J. R. (2010). Geographic variation in the gender differences in test scores. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(2), 95-108.

Guiso, L., Monte, F., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2008). Culture, gender, and math. SCIENCE-NEW YORK THEN WASHINGTON-, 320(5880), 1164.

A number of papers have documented the narrowing of gender gaps in test scores. See, for example, Hyde, J. S., Lindberg, S. M., Linn, M. C., Ellis, A. B., & Williams, C. C. (2008). Gender similarities characterize math performance . Science, 321(5888), 494-495.

Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn. 2017. The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations. Journal of Economic Literature, 55(3): 789-865.

Blau and Kahn write: "While findings such as those in table 7 ['Selected Studies Assessing the Role of Psychological Traits in Accounting for the Gender Pay Gap'] are informative in elucidating some of the possible omitted factors that lie behind gender differences in wages as well as the unexplained gap in traditional wage regressions, in general, the results suggest that these factors do not account for a large portion of either the raw or unexplained gender gap."

For a discussion of 'gendering' see West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender & Society, 1(2), 125-151.

Leibbrandt, A., & List, J. A. (2014). Do women avoid salary negotiations? Evidence from a large-scale natural field experiment. Management Science, 61(9), 2016-2024.

Lauzen, M. M., Dozier, D. M., & Horan, N. (2008). Constructing gender stereotypes through social roles in prime-time television. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 52(2), 200-214.

McCabe, J., Fairchild, E., Grauerholz, L., Pescosolido, B. A., & Tope, D. (2011). Gender in twentieth-century children’s books: Patterns of disparity in titles and central characters. Gender & Society, 25(2), 197-226.

Kane, E. W. (2006). “No way my boys are going to be like that!” Parents’ responses to children’s gender nonconformity. Gender & Society, 20(2), 149-176.

Bertrand, M., Kamenica, E., & Pan, J. (2015). Gender identity and relative income within households. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(2), 571-614.

More precisely, the authors find that in couples where the wife’s potential income is likely to exceed her husband’s (based on the income that would be predicted for her observed characteristics), the wife is less likely to be in the labor force, and if she does work, her income is lower than predicted.

Jensen, R., & Oster, E. (2009). The power of TV: Cable television and women's status in India . In The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 124(3), 1057-1094.

Regarding intergenerational transmission of gender roles, see Fernández, R. (2013). Cultural change as learning: The evolution of female labor force participation over a century. The American Economic Review, 103(1), 472-500.

For a discussion regarding social activism and its link to the determinants of female labor supply, see for example this study by Heer and Grossbard-Shechtman (1981).

Atkinson, A.B., Casarico, A. & Voitchovsky, S. Top incomes and the gender divide . J Econ Inequal (2018) 16: 225.

The authors produced results for 8 countries, and included earlier results for Sweden from Boschini, A., Gunnarsson, K., Roine, J.: Women in Top Incomes: Evidence from Sweden 1974-2013, IZA Discussion paper 10979, August (2017).

World Bank. (2011). World development report 2012: gender equality and development . World Bank Publications.

The map from The World Development Report (2012) provides a more fine-grained overview of different property regimes operating in different countries.

For more discussion of the evidence see page 20 in World Bank (2011) World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. World Bank Publications.

Cite this work

Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this topic page, please also cite the underlying data sources. This topic page can be cited as:

BibTeX citation

Reuse this work freely

All visualizations, data, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license . You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our documentation, so you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use and redistribution.

All of our charts can be embedded in any site.

Our World in Data is free and accessible for everyone.

Help us do this work by making a donation.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Paola belingheri.

1 Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Largo L. Lazzarino, Pisa, Italy

Filippo Chiarello

Andrea fronzetti colladon.

2 Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

3 Department of Management, Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland

Paola Rovelli

4 Faculty of Economics and Management, Centre for Family Business Management, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

Associated Data

All relevant data are within the manuscript and its supporting information files. The only exception is the text of the abstracts (over 15,000) that we have downloaded from Scopus. These abstracts can be retrieved from Scopus, but we do not have permission to redistribute them.

Introduction

Data collection

	Keyword set	Examples of searched words
Gender	Bride
	Daughter	,
	Female	,
	Femini	, ,
	Girl
	Lady	,
	Maid
	Mother	, ,
	Queen
	Widow
	Wife	,
	Woman	,
Equality	Bias	, ,
	Diversity	,
	Empower	, ,
	Equality	, ,
	Equity	, ,
	Homeworking	, ,
	Inclusion	, ,
	Quota
	Stereotype	, ,

Text processing and keyword extraction

Classification of research topics

Topic	Short Description
Behavior	Behavioral aspects related to gender
Board of directors	Women in boards of directors
Career Progression	Women’s promotion and career advancement
Compensation	Salary and rewards in relation to employment
Culture	Ideas, customs and social behaviors, including bias and stereotypes
Decision-making	The decision-making process
Education	Primary, secondary and tertiary education
Empowerment	Authority, power and self-confidence
Entrepreneurship	Women starting their own enterprises
Family	Women’s relationship with family and family obligations, wok-life balance
Feminine	Female characteristics
Governance	The governance structures of firms and society
Hiring	Appointing women to positions within the workforce
Human Capital	The intellectual capital resulting from education and social capital
Leadership	Leadership skills and leadership positions
Management	Managerial practices and processes
Masculine	Male characteristics
Network	Networking dynamics as they relate to women
Organization	The organization of firms
Parenting	The act of raising children and its implications
Performance	Measuring the work output of individuals, teams and organizations
Personality	Traits and individual characteristics of women
Politics	Policies and regulations, women in politics
Reputation	How women are viewed by their colleagues, peers and society
Role	The roles covered by women in the workforce
Sustainability	Women’s relation to sustainability and social responsibility
Well-Being	Psychological, personal, and social welfare of women

Evaluation of semantic importance

Overview of main topics

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is pone.0256474.g001.jpg

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is pone.0256474.g002.jpg

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is pone.0256474.g003.jpg

In addition to the SBS score of the different topics, the network of terms they are associated to enables to gauge the extent to which their images (textual associations) overlap or differ ( Fig 4 ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is pone.0256474.g004.jpg

The following sections describe the top 10 topics and their main associations in literature (see Table 3 ), while providing a brief overview of the emerging topics.

Topic	Top associations (other topics in bold)
Behavior	social, work, , differences, related, , child, positive, group, individual, self, influence, relationship, stereotype, health, inequality, change, , student, participant, , , experience, , , intention
Career Progression	, inequality, difference , work, social, equity, , , , , level, , development, policy, examine, role, self, experience, , support, , individual, , perceive, academic, differences
Compensation	gap, , difference, inequality, , , work, increase, higher, lower, market, less, labor, household, low, , age, time, high, labour, attention, discrimination, change, country, individual, status
Decision Making	, , social, work, , , inequality, household, group, policy, , process, , health, , level, role, individual, , , equity, , stereotype, different, , change
Education	age, inequality, level, , study, social, health, gap, status, equity, student, , , child, , school, economic, policy, work, , experience, higher, access, household, development
Hiring	, work, , , discrimination, level, , time, , gap, sector, , market, social, increase, status, , policy, inequality, experience, differences, lower, equity, high, data, satisfaction,
Human Capital	, , work, , social, , , , self, , health, , , student, , group, child, individual, development, age, differences, lack, gap, focus, change
Organization	work, , , inequality, , , social, diversity, policy, level, change, , employee, individual, , equity, , practice, value, , management, structure, discrimination, ,
Performance	, , , stereotype, work, , , , , self, impact, social, , , difference, high, firm, threat, student, inequality, role, , increase, relationship, experience
Role	, , work, , , , firm, , , social, , role, , employee, less, increase, experience, traditional, , stereotype, sector, , business, gap, group, data

Compensation

Decision-making

Career progression

Performance

Several scholars posed their attention towards women’s performance, its consequences [e.g., 170 , 171 ] and the implications of having women in decision-making positions [e.g., 18 , 19 ].

Organization

Human capital

Emerging topics: Leadership and entrepreneurship

Research gaps and conclusions

Lastly, we foresee an emerging stream of research pertaining how the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged women, especially in the workforce, by making gender biases more evident.

Supporting information

Acknowledgments.

Funding Statement

P.B and F.C.: Grant of the Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction of the University of Pisa (DESTEC) for the project “Measuring Gender Bias with Semantic Analysis: The Development of an Assessment Tool and its Application in the European Space Industry. P.B., F.C., A.F.C., P.R.: Grant of the Italian Association of Management Engineering (AiIG), “Misure di sostegno ai soci giovani AiIG” 2020, for the project “Gender Equality Through Data Intelligence (GEDI)”. F.C.: EU project ASSETs+ Project (Alliance for Strategic Skills addressing Emerging Technologies in Defence) EAC/A03/2018 - Erasmus+ programme, Sector Skills Alliances, Lot 3: Sector Skills Alliance for implementing a new strategic approach (Blueprint) to sectoral cooperation on skills G.A. NUMBER: 612678-EPP-1-2019-1-IT-EPPKA2-SSA-B.

Data Availability

Dissertation
PowerPoint Presentation
Book Report/Review
Research Proposal
Math Problems
Proofreading
Movie Review
Cover Letter Writing
Personal Statement
Nursing Paper
Argumentative Essay
Research Paper
Discussion Board Post

What is gender equality?

Equality between the sexes is a huge part of basic human rights. It means that men and women have the same opportunities to fulfil their potential in all spheres of life.

Today, we still face inequality issues as there is a persistent gap in access to opportunities for men and women.

Women have less access to decision-making and higher education. They constantly face obstacles at the workplace and have greater safety risks. Maintaining equal rights for both sexes is critical for meeting a wide range of goals in global development.

Inequality between the sexes is an interesting area to study so high school, college, and university students are often assigned to write essays on gender topics.

In this article, we are going to discuss the key peculiarities of gender equality essay. Besides, we have created a list of the best essay topic ideas.

What is the specifics of gender equality essay?

Equality and inequality between the sexes are important historical and current social issues which impact the way students and their families live. They are common topics for college papers in psychology, sociology, gender studies.

When writing an essay on equality between the sexes, you need to argue for a strong point of view and support your argument with relevant evidence gathered from multiple sources.

But first, you’d need to choose a good topic which is neither too broad nor too narrow to research.

Research is crucial for the success of your essay because you should develop a strong argument based on an in-depth study of various scholarly sources.

Equality between sexes is a complex problem. You have to consider different aspects and controversial points of view on specific issues, show your ability to think critically, develop a strong thesis statement, and build a logical argument, which can make a great impression on your audience.

If you are looking for interesting gender equality essay topics, here you will find a great list of 100 topic ideas for writing essays and research papers on gender issues in contemporary society.

Should you find that some topics are too broad, feel free to narrow them down.

Powerful gender equality essay topics

Here are the top 25 hottest topics for your argumentative opinion paper on gender issues.

Whether you are searching for original creative ideas for gender equality in sports essay or need inspiration for gender equality in education essay, we’ve got you covered.

Use imagination and creativity to demonstrate your approach.

Analyze gender-based violence in different countries
Compare wage gap between the sexes in different countries
Explain the purpose of gender mainstreaming
Implications of sex differences in the human brain
How can we teach boys and girls that they have equal rights?
Discuss gender-neutral management practices
Promotion of equal opportunities for men and women in sports
What does it mean to be transgender?
Discuss the empowerment of women
Why is gender-blindness a problem for women?
Why are girls at greater risk of sexual violence and exploitation?
Women as victims of human trafficking
Analyze the glass ceiling in management
Impact of ideology in determining relations between sexes
Obstacles that prevent girls from getting quality education in African countries
Why are so few women in STEM?
Major challenges women face at the workplace
How do women in sport fight for equality?
Women, sports, and media institutions
Contribution of women in the development of the world economy
Role of gender diversity in innovation and scientific discovery
What can be done to make cities safer for women and girls?
International trends in women’s empowerment
Role of schools in teaching children behaviours considered appropriate for their sex
Feminism on social relations uniting women and men as groups

Gender roles essay topics

We can measure the equality of men and women by looking at how both sexes are represented in a range of different roles. You don’t have to do extensive and tiresome research to come up with gender roles essay topics, as we have already done it for you.

Have a look at this short list of top-notch topic ideas .

Are paternity and maternity leaves equally important for babies?
Imagine women-dominated society and describe it
Sex roles in contemporary western societies
Compare theories of gender development
Adoption of sex-role stereotyped behaviours
What steps should be taken to achieve gender-parity in parenting?
What is gender identity?
Emotional differences between men and women
Issues modern feminism faces
Sexual orientation and gender identity
Benefits of investing in girls’ education
Patriarchal attitudes and stereotypes in family relationships
Toys and games of girls and boys
Roles of men and women in politics
Compare career opportunities for both sexes in the military
Women in the US military
Academic careers and sex equity
Should men play larger roles in childcare?
Impact of an ageing population on women’s economic welfare
Historical determinants of contemporary differences in sex roles
Gender-related issues in gaming
Culture and sex-role stereotypes in advertisements
What are feminine traits?
Sex role theory in sociology
Causes of sex differences and similarities in behaviour

Gender inequality research paper topics

Examples of inequality can be found in the everyday life of different women in many countries across the globe. Our gender inequality research paper topics are devoted to different issues that display discrimination of women throughout the world.

Choose any topic you like, research it, brainstorm ideas, and create a detailed gender inequality essay outline before you start working on your first draft.

Start off with making a debatable thesis, then write an engaging introduction, convincing main body, and strong conclusion for gender inequality essay .

Aspects of sex discrimination
Main indications of inequality between the sexes
Causes of sex discrimination
Inferior role of women in the relationships
Sex differences in education
Can education solve issues of inequality between the sexes?
Impact of discrimination on early childhood development
Why do women have limited professional opportunities in sports?
Gender discrimination in sports
Lack of women having leadership roles
Inequality between the sexes in work-family balance
Top factors that impact inequality at a workplace
What can governments do to close the gender gap at work?
Sex discrimination in human resource processes and practices
Gender inequality in work organizations
Factors causing inequality between men and women in developing countries
Work-home conflict as a symptom of inequality between men and women
Why are mothers less wealthy than women without children?
Forms of sex discrimination in a contemporary society
Sex discrimination in the classroom
Justification of inequality in American history
Origins of sex discrimination
Motherhood and segregation in labour markets
Sex discrimination in marriage
Can technology reduce sex discrimination?

Most controversial gender topics

Need a good controversial topic for gender stereotypes essay? Here are some popular debatable topics concerning various gender problems people face nowadays.

They are discussed in scientific studies, newspaper articles, and social media posts. If you choose any of them, you will need to perform in-depth research to prepare an impressive piece of writing.

How do gender misconceptions impact behaviour?
Most common outdated sex-role stereotypes
How does gay marriage influence straight marriage?
Explain the role of sexuality in sex-role stereotyping
Role of media in breaking sex-role stereotypes
Discuss the dual approach to equality between men and women
Are women better than men or are they equal?
Sex-role stereotypes at a workplace
Racial variations in gender-related attitudes
Role of feminism in creating the alternative culture for women
Feminism and transgender theory
Gender stereotypes in science and education
Are sex roles important for society?
Future of gender norms
How can we make a better world for women?
Are men the weaker sex?
Beauty pageants and women’s empowerment
Are women better communicators?
What are the origins of sexual orientation?
Should prostitution be legal?
Pros and cons of being a feminist
Advantages and disadvantages of being a woman
Can movies defy gender stereotypes?
Sexuality and politics

Feel free to use these powerful topic ideas for writing a good college-level gender equality essay or as a starting point for your study.

No time to do decent research and write your top-notch paper? No big deal! Choose any topic from our list and let a pro write the essay for you!

Choosing Topic For A Research Paper On The Death Penalty

Problem solution essay topics.

Othello Essay Topic: Choosing a Perfect One for an Essay

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

Publications
Our Methods
Short Reads
Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

Key takeaways on Americans’ views on gender equality a century after U.S. women gained the right to vote

Aug. 18 marks the 100-year anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women in the United States the right to vote. As this milestone approaches, about half of Americans (49%) say granting women the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the country, according to a Pew Research Center study. And while many Americans say the last decade has seen progress in the fight for gender equality, a majority say the country still hasn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men.

Here are some key takeaways from the report , which was based on a nationally representative survey of 3,143 U.S. adults conducted online from March 18-April 1, 2020.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ views of the current state of gender equality and the advancement of women around the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote. For this analysis, we surveyed 3,143 U.S. adults in March and April 2020, including an oversample of Black and Hispanic respondents. The adults surveyed are members of the Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel, an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses and landline and cellphone numbers. KnowledgePanel provides internet access for those who do not have it and, if needed, a device to access the internet when they join the panel. To ensure that the results of this survey reflect a balanced cross section of the nation, the data are weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, age, education, race and ethnicity and other categories. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish.

Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology .

Views on how far the country has come on gender equality differ widely by gender and by party

A majority (57%) of adults say the U.S. hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men. Assessments of the country’s progress vary by gender and political party. Women (64%) are more likely than men (49%) to say that the country hasn’t made enough progress, and Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party are more than twice as likely as Republicans and Republican leaners to say the U.S. hasn’t gone far enough to give women the same rights as men (76% vs. 33%).

Americans are more dissatisfied with the state of gender equality now than when the question was asked in 2017. Three years ago, half of adults said the country hadn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men, compared with 57% of adults today. This attitudinal shift has occurred across both gender and party lines.

Among those who think the country still has work to do in achieving gender equality, 77% say sexual harassment is a major obstacle to women’s equality. Smaller shares, but still majorities, also point to other obstacles: 67% say women don’t have the same legal rights as men; 66% say that there are different societal expectations for men and women; and 64% say there aren’t enough women in positions of power. Women are more likely than men to say these are major obstacles.

About three-quarters of Americans who say country has work to do on gender equality see sexual harassment as a major obstacle

When asked what gender equality would look like, many of those who say it’s somewhat or very important for men and women to have equal rights point to the workplace. Specifically, 45% volunteer that a society where women have equal rights with men would include equal pay, and 19% say there would be no discrimination in hiring, promotion or educational opportunities. About one-in-ten (9%) point to more or equal representation in business or political leadership.

About three-in-ten U.S. men think women’s gains have come at the expense of men. Most Americans (76%) say the gains have not come at the expense of men, although 22% of adults – including 28% of men and 17% of women – think they have come at the expense of men. Republican men (38%) are twice as likely as Democratic men (19%) to say the gains women have made have come at the expense of men. A quarter of Republican women also say this, compared with 12% of Democratic women.

Among women, those without a bachelor’s degree are about twice as likely as college graduates to say women’s gains have come at the expense of men (21% vs. 10%). Educational differences are less pronounced among men.

Americans are more than twice as likely to say that, when it comes to gender discrimination, the bigger problem is people not seeing it where it really does exist, rather than people seeing discrimination where it does not exist (67% vs. 31%). Three-quarters of women point to gender discrimination being overlooked as the bigger problem; 60% of men agree.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats (85%) say the bigger problem is people overlooking gender discrimination. Among Republicans, more say the bigger problem is people seeing discrimination where it doesn’t exist (53%) than say it is people not seeing it where it does exist (46%). Republican women are far more likely than Republican men to say people overlooking gender discrimination is the bigger problem (54% vs. 38%).

Majorities say the feminist movement and the Democratic Party have done at least a fair amount when it comes to institutions and groups that have helped advance women’s rights. Seven-in-ten Americans say the feminist movement has done a great deal or a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S., while 59% say the same about the Democratic Party. Far fewer (37%) say the Republican Party has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights.

Seven-in-ten say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights

About three-in-ten adults (29%) say President Donald Trump has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while 69% say Trump has not done much or has done nothing at all.

More say feminism has helped white women a lot than say it has done the same for Black or Hispanic women

While a majority of Americans say feminism has had a positive impact on the lives of white, Black and Hispanic women, more say feminism has helped White women a lot. About three-in-ten U.S. adults say feminism has helped the lives of white women (32%), About three-in-ten U.S. adults say feminism has helped the lives a white women a lot, compared with 21% and 15% who say this about Black women and Hispanic women, respectively.

Asked about the impact of feminism on other groups of women, a majority of Americans (57%) say feminism has helped lesbian and bisexual women at least a little, but fewer (41%) say feminism has helped transgender women. And while about half (49%) say feminism has helped wealthy and poor women at least a little, more say it’s helped wealthy women a lot (24%) than say it’s been equally helpful to poor women (10%).

About four-in-ten women (41%) say feminism has helped them personally. Women most likely to say this include those with a bachelor’s degree or more education (55%), Hispanic women (46%), women younger than 50 (47%) and Democratic women (50%).

Most who say the country still has work to do on gender equality say equality is likely to be achieved in the future. More than eight-in-ten Americans who say the country hasn’t made enough progress say it is very likely (31%) or somewhat likely (53%) that women will have equal rights with men in the future, compared with 16% who say they think gender equality is not too likely or not at all likely. Men who say the country has not yet achieved gender equality are more likely than women to say that gender equality is very likely (37% vs. 26%). Democratic women are the least likely to say this is very likely: 23% say this, compared with 35% of Republican women and 38% of Democratic and Republican men.

Note: Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology .

Discrimination & Prejudice
Gender Equality & Discrimination

Amanda Barroso is a former writer/editor focusing on social trends at Pew Research Center .

Americans’ views of offensive speech aren’t necessarily clear-cut

Cultural issues and the 2024 election, rising numbers of americans say jews and muslims face a lot of discrimination, how u.s. muslims are experiencing the israel-hamas war, how u.s. jews are experiencing the israel-hamas war, most popular.

901 E St. NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20004 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries

Research Topics

Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

143 Unique Gender Inequality Essay Titles & Examples

Here, you will find 85 thought-provoking topics relating to gender, equality, and discrimination. Browse through our list to find inspiration for your paper – and don’t forget to read the gender inequality essay samples written by other students.

👩 Top 10 Gender Equality Title Ideas

🏆 best gender bias essay topics, 💡 interesting topics to write about gender inequality, 📌 simple & easy gender inequality essay titles, 👍 good gender equality research title ideas, ❓ gender inequality research questions.

Globalization, gender, and development.
The Pink Tax.
Women and unpaid labor.
Gender stereotypes in media.
Emma Watson’s speech on gender equality.
A critique of HeForShe campaign.
Education for girls in Ghana.
The suffrage movement.
Crimes against girls and women.
Female empowerment in STEM fields.
Gender Inequality in the Story of Ama Aidoo “In the Cutting of a Drink” The story of Ama Aidoo In the Cutting of a Drink tells about gender inequality, which is expressed in the clash between the typical values of rural residents and the values of people living in […]
Gender Inequality in Workplace Gender is the main reason for inequalities in the workplace; this is because nowadays there is a steady increase in the number of women in workplaces in the world.
Sociological perspectives of Gender Inequality The events taking place in the modern world and the occurrence of the feminist movements during the past few decades can be used to offer a deeper understanding on the subject of gender inequality and […]
Gender Inequality: The Role of Media The media plays a major role in gender socialization because of the ways it chooses to portray women. Shows such as Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Snow White are famous because they usher children […]
Gender Inequality as a Global Societal Problem For eliminating the gender wage gap, nationwide legislation shows to increase the hiring and promotion of women in the workplace. Unfortunately, there is a gap in scholarly research in regards to reflecting the success of […]
Gender Inequality as a Global Issue This essay will examine some of the causes that affect the gap in the treatment of men and women, and its ramifications, particularly regarding developing countries.
Gender Inequality in the Field of Working Wright and Yaeger state that it is the deep intersection of the life and work fields in the current working paradigm that creates daily and long-term problems, limits the available time for male and female […]
Gender Inequality and Female Leaders in the Hospitality Industry The current literature regarding the challenges and issues facing women in leadership positions in the hospitality industry in France is inadequate.
Gender Inequality in Afghanistan Thirdly, there is social gender inequality, which is demonstrated by women being the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, inequalities in education attainment, lack of freedom to marry and divorce, and unequal access to […]
Gender Inequality and the Glass Ceiling The significant societal barriers that keep women from achieving the highest levels of their careers include, but are not limited to, organizational barriers, societal barriers, and Personal barriers.
Gender Inequality in Social Media Research shows that teenagers from the age of thirteen use social media to discuss the physical appearances of girls and exchange images with sexual content.
Combating Gender Inequality It is thanks to this approach that humanity will be able to successfully cope with the problem of gender inequality, sexism, and discrimination.
Gender Inequality in Family Business One of the problems that every woman faces in a family business is that of succession. In the model of Royal Families, the right to lead the business belongs to the oldest son.
Social, Cultural and Gender Inequality From a Global Perspective It is the duty of the tutor to craft a lecture-room environment that serves to enhance meaningful discussions concerning gender. This is due to the fact that students learn best in various ways.
Gender Inequality in Relation to the Military Service In his article, Soutik Biswas refers to the intention of India’s Supreme Court to influence the government and give women commanding roles in the army.
Gender Inequality and Socio-Economic Development Gender inequality in the US determines who is to be in the kitchen and who is to sit in the White House.
Gender Inequality in the Video Games Industry The portrayal of males and females in video games is a subject of study in gender studies and is discussed in the context of sexism in the industry.
Women’s Rights and Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia Indeed, it is crucial to understand the importance of women’s rights, see the connections between the past, the present, the local, and the global, and realize how political and media discourse represents the social issue […]
The Issue of Gender Inequality Reflection Unfortunately, in the opinion of many, inequality in their treatment is even more pronounced, forming a third group from such persons in addition to binary people and positioning them at the end of the list.
Femicide in Mexico and the Problem of Gender Inequality Femicide remains one of the most devastating issues in Mexico, and it is vital to address the gender oppression and inequality that women face.
Gender Inequality in Mass Media However, as a part of society, media organizations are influenced by the same social aspects and biased conclusions as the rest of the community. As a result, the owners and managers of media are mainly […]
Gender Inequality in American Stories and Plays There are disputes about the sexual desire of men and women and how it is applied, and the use of physical strength of men on women.
Gender Inequality and Female Empowerment Promotion Therefore, it is crucial to continue celebrating women’s accomplishments and encourage a positive change within the current perception of women as a social and biological class.
Gender Inequality in Interdisciplinary Lenses Both sociologists and legal experts concur that a gender bias ingrained in society is the primary factor contributing to the issue of women in the workforce.
Gender Inequality at Work in Developed Countries In France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Great Britain, men are disadvantaged throughout the employment process for professions where women predominate. These are the conclusions of a study conducted by the University of Amsterdam, the University […]
Gender Inequality and Its Causes Analysis It is evident that the difference is so insignificant to the point where some women can be athletically stronger than men, and there is a vast difference in strength among men themselves.
Human Objectification as a Tool of Gender Inequality Objectification and culture of suppressed emotions of the male gender lead to the further sexual objectification of the females resulting in unequal social positions.
The Issue of Gender Inequality After Covid-19 To date, the role of women in society has increased many times over, both in the economic, social, and political spheres of public life.
Gender Inequality in the Construction Field It is important that the main actors in the sector understand that gender equality can help reduce the issue of shortage of skill that exists in that field.
Social Enterprises and Gender Inequality in Dubai In the context of UAE demographics, the population of Dubai has been rightfully considered the most diverse in terms of age, income, and socio-ethnic background, as this city is a conglomerate for tourists, business visitors, […]
The Relationship Between Gender Inequality and Women’s Economic Independence In a scenario where the wife is employed, either of the parents has the means of supporting themselves as well as other dependents, and this is the most remarkable benefit of emancipation.
Gender Inequality: On the Influence of Culture and Religion Therefore, to understand more about the topic, it is essential to study the issues from various perspectives and find the connection of the discourse to other gender-related problems and theories.
Gender Inequality and Its Implications on American Society It is not just the fight for the women’s rights, elimination of the gender pay gap or the harassment phenomenon. The voices of those who disagree with the fact that the resolution of one case […]
Women From the Downtown Eastside: Gender Inequality One of the main questions that bother many people around the whole world is the identification of the conditions under which the citizens of the Downtown Eastside disappeared.
Issues Surrounding Gender Inequality in the Workplace The main objective of the constructionist point of view is that it is aimed at uncovering how the individuals and the groups tend to participate in the creation of their perceptions of gender and women […]
Public Policy Analysis on Gender Inequality in Education in South Sudan The major challenges related to the development of the educational system are the ongoing violent attacks and natural disasters. The General Education Strategic Plan, 2017-2022 is the government’s response to the most burning issues in […]
Gender Inequality, Violence Against Women, and Fear in The Sopranos Thus, the major research question will be “Does The Sopranos endorse or criticize VaW through the frequent depiction of the scenes of cruelty?” The hypothesis of the research paper will be “The portrayal of VaW […]
Race & Gender Inequality and Economic Empowerment This means that the study will analyze the problem of race and gender inequality and examine how it is related to poverty.
Gender Inequality: “Caliban and the Witch” by Federici Federici shows the fall of female ability for autonomy and the rise of patriarchal societies as a result of an emerging emphasis on global trade and the perceived notion that the wealth of the country […]
Gender Inequality Index 2013 in the Gulf Countries However, the ratio of women in the parliament is noticeably lower, and that explains why the GII of Kuwait is slightly higher than the one of the UEA.
Gender Inequality: Reginald Murphy College To establish the accuracy of the allegations raised as a group, the factors to ensuring the retrieval of the correct information about the issue in question are the involvement of all members of the administration […]
Gender Inequality at the China’s Workplaces Although researchers have quantified the extent of gender pay inequality in the workplace, they hold different opinions regarding the best strategies to use in addressing the problem.
Gender Inequality and Its Historical Origin Seeing that the effects of the two factors are reciprocal, it can be assumed that, though both have had a tangible impact on the contemporary representation of women in the society, traditions have a significantly […]
Gender Inequality in Europe, America, Asia, Africa The laws and customs of the countries located in Africa and the Middle East are shaped by many factors. Some of the laws in the Middle East are clearly unfair towards women.
Women in the Workplace: Gender Inequality I examine the idea of work-and-life balance that is proposed as a solution to the problem of having a family and career at the same time and point out the fact that it is typically […]
Bill Myers’ Leadership and Gender Inequality In this case, the bartenders, wait staff and the busboys all possess the required skills and knowledge for the job, and thus ought to be treated equally.
Gender Inequality in the Labor Force The aim of this article is to assess the assertion that gender inequality exists in the labor force. The table below shows global adult employment-to-population by gender for 1998 and 2008.
How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World? According Ridgeway, it may not be correct per se to say that its only women who are aggrieved by the gender imbalance but majority of the cases that depict gender inequalities involve women on the […]
Gender Inequality in America This event highlighted the extent to which women were vulnerable to the prejudices of the society. This particular event is important because it lead to the exclusion of women from the political life of the […]
Gender inequality in Algeria The fact that women helped to build back the ruins of society and the heroism they showed in the war efforts, was forgotten by their husbands and the government.
Gender inequality in Canada According to, although it is certain that men and women have actual differences particularly physically, most of the social indifference perception are not because of the biological connotation but because of the over time cultural […]
Gender Inequality in the US Of more importance in the enhancement of gender inequality is the role of the media. The natural constrains described above and the multiplier effects from the historical insubordination of women still play to men’s favor […]
Observations on the Gender Inequality This is the best way to preserve the stability and order in a gendered society, although the young woman in the street cannot accept this order of things.
The Effects of International Trade on Gender Inequality: Women Carpet Weavers of Iran
The Prevailing Gender Inequality in USA
Perspectives On Gender Inequality And The Barrier Of Culture On Education
Race, Ethnicity and Gender Inequality in the Rwanda Genocide
The Scarcity Of Water And Its Effect On Gender Inequality
Unequal Division Of Economic Growth And Gender Inequality
The Measurement of Multidimensional Gender Inequality
The Growing Issue of Gender Inequality in the Workplace
Understanding Gender Inequality in Employment and Retirement
The Violation of Women and the Practice of Gender Inequality Through Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
The Different Elements That Affect Gender Inequality in Society
How Gender Inequality Is Defined As The Unequal Treatment
The Controversial Issue of Gender Inequality in the Twentieth Century
The Correlation between Poverty and Gender Inequality
The Problem of Gender Inequality in the United States and Its Negative Impact on American Society
National Culture, Gender Inequality and Women’s Success in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises
The Institutional Basis of Gender Inequality: The Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI)
The Issue of Gender Stereotypes and Its Contribution to Gender Inequality in the Second Presidential Debate
Women´s Right Movement: Gender Inequality
International Relations: Gender Inequality Issues
Problems of Gender Inequality for Women in India and Other
The Role of Women Discrimination and Gender Inequality in Development: The Cross-Section Analysis by Different Income Groups
The Effect of Gender Inequality on Economic Development: Case of African Countries
The Role of Historical Resource Constraints in Modern Gender Inequality: A Cross-Country Analysis
The Influence of Gender Budgeting in Indian States on Gender Inequality and Fiscal Spending
Identity, Society, and Gender Inequality of Women in North West India
How Debates of Gender Inequality and Gender Roles are Conflicted With Family Structures
The Features of the Problem of Gender Inequality in the World
Untapped Potential in the Study of Negotiation and Gender Inequality in Organizations
The Impact of the Sectoral Allocation of Foreign aid on Gender Inequality
The Impact Of Gender Inequality On Employee Satisfaction
The Issue of Gender Inequality Between the North and South in the United States
The Problem of Gender Inequality in South Asia and Its Effects on Girls and Women in Society
Whether Patriarchy Is The Leading Cause Of Gender Inequality
The Issues of Gender Inequality in the Book a Woman on the Edge
Women Deserve For A Girl : A Real Issue Of Gender Inequality
The Main Causes And Consequences Of Gender Inequality
The Experience of Gender Inequality in The Awakening, a Novel by Kate Chopin
The Issues of Gender Inequality in the Political Landscape Despite the Legal and Theoretical Attempts to Overcome the Gender Gap
Measuring Key Disparities in Human Development: The Gender Inequality Index
The Relationship of the Cultural and Historical Specificity of Gender Inequality in Mitchell’s Not Enough of the Past
Stange Journeys and Gender Inequality in Pullman and Dangarembga
Help or Hindrance? Religion’s Impact on Gender Inequality in Attitudes and Outcomes
Should Women Continue Fighting Against Gender Inequality
Women ‘s Gender Inequality By Chinua Achebe ‘s Things Fall Apart
Legislation and Labour Market Gender Inequality: An Analysis of OECD Countries
What Are the Types of Gender Inequality?
Does Gender Inequality Hinder Development and Economic Growth?
What Does Gender Inequality Mean?
Does Trade Liberalization Help to Reduce Gender Inequality?
What are the main issues of gender inequality?
How Has Gender Inequality Impacted Contemporary Catholicism?
What Determines Gender Inequality in Household Food Security in Kenya?
Who Is Affected by Gender Inequality?
What Causes Gender Inequality?
Where Is Gender Inequality Most Common?
What Are the Effects of Gender Equality?
How Can We Stop Gender Inequality?
What Is an Example of Gender Equality?
Does Gender Inequality Still Exist Today?
What Is the Impact of Gender Inequality in the Society?
When Did Gender Inequality Become an Issue?
What Are the Three Main Areas of Gender Inequality in the World?
How Does Gender Inequality Affect Development?
What Is the Difference Between Gender Equity, Gender Equality, and Women’s Empowerment?
Why Is Gender Equality Important?
Is Gender Equality a Concern for Men?
What Are the Manifestations of Gender Inequality in the Modern Society?
Is Gender Inequality Still a Pending and Pressing Issue in the Modern World?
What Are the Causes and Effects of Gender Inequality in the European Society?
Can Gender Inequality Issues Be a Boost for Women’s Progress, Development, and Improvement in the Workplace?
What Are the Future Consequences and Outcomes of the Present-Day Gender Inequality?
Where Does Gender Inequality Step From?
Is It Possible at All to Achieve Gender Equality?
What Is Gender Blindness and How Does It Impact the Overall Concept of Gender Inequality?
Is Education a Solution to Solve Inequality Between the Sexes?
Gender Roles Paper Topics
Demography Paper Topics
Family Relationships Research Ideas
Women’s Rights Titles
Personal Identity Paper Topics
Women’s Role Essay Topics
Workplace Discrimination Research Topics
Feminism Questions
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, February 26). 143 Unique Gender Inequality Essay Titles & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/gender-inequality-essay-topics/

"143 Unique Gender Inequality Essay Titles & Examples." IvyPanda , 26 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/gender-inequality-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '143 Unique Gender Inequality Essay Titles & Examples'. 26 February.

IvyPanda . 2024. "143 Unique Gender Inequality Essay Titles & Examples." February 26, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/gender-inequality-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "143 Unique Gender Inequality Essay Titles & Examples." February 26, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/gender-inequality-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "143 Unique Gender Inequality Essay Titles & Examples." February 26, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/gender-inequality-essay-topics/.

How It Works
PhD thesis writing
Master thesis writing
Bachelor thesis writing
Dissertation writing service
Dissertation abstract writing
Thesis proposal writing
Thesis editing service
Thesis proofreading service
Thesis formatting service
Coursework writing service
Research paper writing service
Architecture thesis writing
Computer science thesis writing
Engineering thesis writing
History thesis writing
MBA thesis writing
Nursing dissertation writing
Psychology dissertation writing
Sociology thesis writing
Statistics dissertation writing
Buy dissertation online
Write my dissertation
Cheap thesis
Cheap dissertation
Custom dissertation
Dissertation help
Pay for thesis
Pay for dissertation
Senior thesis
Write my thesis

100 Gender Research Topics For Academic Papers

Gender research topics are very popular across the world. Students in different academic disciplines are often asked to write papers and essays about these topics. Some of the disciplines that require learners to write about gender topics include:

Sociology Psychology Gender studies Business studies

When pursuing higher education in these disciplines, learners can choose what to write about from a wide range of gender issues topics. However, the wide range of issues that learners can research and write about when it comes to gender makes choosing what to write about difficult. Here is a list of the top 100 gender and sexuality topics that students can consider.

Controversial Gender Research Topics

Do you like the idea of writing about something controversial? If yes, this category has some of the best gender topics to write about. They touch on issues like gender stereotypes and issues that are generally associated with members of a specific gender. Here are some of the best controversial gender topics that you can write about.

How human behavior is affected by gender misconceptions
How are straight marriages influenced by gay marriages
Explain the most common sex-role stereotypes
What are the effects of workplace stereotypes?
What issues affect modern feminism?
How sexuality affects sex-role stereotyping
How does the media break sex-role stereotypes
Explain the dual approach to equality between women and men
What are the most outdated sex-role stereotypes
Are men better than women?
How equal are men and women?
How do politics and sexuality relate?
How can films defy gender-based stereotypes
What are the advantages of being a woman?
What are the disadvantages of being a woman?
What are the advantages of being a man?
Discuss the disadvantages of being a woman
Should governments legalize prostitution?
Explain how sexual orientation came about?
Women communicate better than men
Women are the stronger sex
Explain how the world can be made better for women
Discuss the future gender norms
How important are sex roles in society
Discuss the transgender and feminism theory
How does feminism help in the creation of alternative women’s culture?
Gender stereotypes in education and science
Discuss racial variations when it comes to gender-related attitudes
Women are better leaders
Men can’t survive without women

This category also has some of the best gender debate topics. However, learners should be keen to pick topics they are interested in. This will enable them to ensure that they enjoy the research and writing process.

Interesting Gender Inequality Topics

Gender-based inequality is witnessed almost every day. As such, most learners are conversant with gender inequality research paper topics. However, it’s crucial to pick topics that are devoid of discrimination of members of a specific gender. Here are examples of gender inequality essay topics.

Sex discrimination aspects in schools
How to identify inequality between sexes
Sex discrimination causes
The inferior role played by women in relationships
Discuss sex differences in the education system
How can gender discrimination be identified in sports?
Can inequality issues between men and women be solved through education?
Why are professional opportunities for women in sports limited?
Why are there fewer women in leadership positions?
Discuss gender inequality when it comes to work-family balance
How does gender-based discrimination affect early childhood development?
Can sex discrimination be reduced by technology?
How can sex discrimination be identified in a marriage?
Explain where sex discrimination originates from
Discuss segregation and motherhood in labor markets
Explain classroom sex discrimination
How can inequality in American history be justified?
Discuss different types of sex discrimination in modern society
Discuss various factors that cause gender-based inequality
Discuss inequality in human resource practices and processes
Why is inequality between women and men so rampant in developing countries?
How can governments bridge gender gaps between women and men?
Work-home conflict is a sign of inequality between women and men
Explain why women are less wealthy than men
How can workplace gender-based inequality be addressed?

After choosing the gender inequality essay topics they like, students should research, brainstorm ideas, and come up with an outline before they start writing. This will ensure that their essays have engaging introductions and convincing bodies, as well as, strong conclusions.

Amazing Gender Roles Topics for Academic Papers and Essays

This category has ideas that slightly differ from gender equality topics. That’s because equality or lack of it can be measured by considering the representation of both genders in different roles. As such, some gender roles essay topics might not require tiresome and extensive research to write about. Nevertheless, learners should take time to gather the necessary information required to write about these topics. Here are some of the best gender topics for discussion when it comes to the roles played by men and women in society.

Describe gender identity
Describe how a women-dominated society would be
Compare gender development theories
How equally important are maternity and paternity levees for babies?
How can gender-parity be achieved when it comes to parenting?
Discuss the issues faced by modern feminism
How do men differ from women emotionally?
Discuss gender identity and sexual orientation
Is investing in the education of girls beneficial?
Explain the adoption of gender-role stereotyped behaviors
Discuss games and toys for boys and girls
Describe patriarchal attitudes in families
Explain patriarchal stereotypes in family relationships
What roles do women and men play in politics?
Discuss sex equity and academic careers
Compare military career opportunities for both genders
Discuss the perception of women in the military
Describe feminine traits
Discus gender-related issues faced by women in gaming
Men should play major roles in the welfare of their children
Explain how the aging population affects the economic welfare of women?
What has historically determined modern differences in gender roles?
Does society need stereotyped gender roles?
Does nature have a role to play in stereotyped gender roles?
The development and adoption of gender roles

The list of gender essay topics that are based on the roles of each sex can be quite extensive. Nevertheless, students should be keen to pick interesting gender topics in this category.

Important Gender Issues Topics for Research Paper

If you want to write a paper or essay on an important gender issue, this category has the best ideas for you. Students can write about different issues that affect individuals of different genders. For instance, this category can include gender wage gap essay topics. Wage variation is a common issue that affects women in different countries. Some of the best gender research paper topics in this category include:

Discuss gender mainstreaming purpose
Discuss the issue of gender-based violence
Why is the wage gap so common in most countries?
How can society promote equality in opportunities for women and men in sports?
Explain what it means to be transgender
Discuss the best practices of gender-neutral management
What is women’s empowerment?
Discuss how human trafficking affects women
How problematic is gender-blindness for women?
What does the glass ceiling mean in management?
Why are women at a higher risk of sexual exploitation and violence?
Why is STEM uptake low among women?
How does ideology affect the determination of relations between genders
How are sporting women fighting for equality?
Discuss sports, women, and media institutions
How can cities be made safer for girls and women?
Discuss international trends in the empowerment of women
How do women contribute to the world economy?
Explain how feminism on different social relations unites men and women as groups
Explain how gender diversity influence scientific discovery and innovation

This category has some of the most interesting women’s and gender studies paper topics. However, most of them require extensive research to come up with hard facts and figures that will make academic papers or essays more interesting.

Students in high schools and colleges can pick what to write about from a wide range of gender studies research topics. However, some gender studies topics might not be ideal for some learners based on the given essay prompt. Therefore, make sure that you have understood what the educator wants you to write about before you pick a topic. Our experts can help you choose a good thesis topic . Choosing the right gender studies topics enables learners to answer the asked questions properly. This impresses educators to award them top grades.

The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

Reading Room

A Scientific Perspective on the Patriarchy: The Gender Pay Gap and Unequal Opportunity

by Marc Defant

D o we live in a patriarchy? Does toxic masculinity permeate our society? Are they the reasons why women are paid less than men, and fewer women are working in STEM? There is a long-documented history of these differences, and they go deeper than you might think. Let’s consider some causal explanations.

The Gender Pay Gap

One statistic offered as evidence of male hegemony (i.e., the patriarchy) is the ubiquitous gender pay gap that exists between men and women. For example, self-described feminist economists 1 Xuan Pham, Laura Fitzpatrick, and Richard Wagner suggest:

…the two overarching institutions that enable the persistence of the GPG [gender pay gap] in the USA are capitalism and patriarchy. Capitalism is a production system is [sic] driven by the profit motive, meaning firms seek to cost minimize. If employers can pay whole segments of workers lower wages, it is easier to boost profit margins and preserve capitalist production. The incentive to do this is quite powerful and a society that relegates women to a lesser position through non-labor market forces enhances the potential to increase exploitation of women through differential wages relative to men… Capitalism alone cannot create the GPG, however. The other crucial institution, patriarchy—allowing for gender-based disparate treatment—has deep roots in U.S. society . At the country’s founding, women were no more than the property of men. 2

The ratio of annual earnings between women and men has gone from a low of 59 cents on the dollar in 1963 to 84 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024. 3 Pham et al. claim the patriarchy is responsible for the gender pay gap—that is, wholesale discrimination against women. Most leading economists, regardless of their gender, disagree. Cornell University economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn point out 4 most of the reduction in the pay gap came in the 1980s and early 1990s during a “sharp increase in female participation rates” in the work force—increasing from 32 percent in 1947 to 57 percent in 2014 while the male participation rate fell from 87 to 69 percent over the same period.

Countering the oppressive patriarchy argument, an extraordinary and remarkable natural experiment that demonstrates the lack of discrimination in the differences in pay between men and women was conducted by researchers at Stanford University in 2018 using data from over one million Uber drivers. Uber pays their drivers according to a rigid “non-negotiated formula” (i.e., invariant among drivers), and they do not offer any employee benefits. The drivers also determine when and where they work. Each driver earns a specific base fare in addition to a “per-minute and per-distance” fare beginning with the pickup and ending with the drop off of a customer. During periods of high customer demand, drivers can receive a “surge multiplier.” More importantly as related to the gender pay gap, there are no promotions, work overtime pay, or any ability to negotiate higher pay for drivers. In other words, earnings are directly proportional to productivity. The Stanford researchers have also demonstrated that there is no meaningful customer discrimination toward female or male drivers. In other words, there are no statistically significant differences in customer ratings of men and women drivers nor do riders prefer one gender to the other. 5

The results of the study show unequivocally that men earn about 7 percent more than women on an hourly basis.* The “entire gap” can be explained by three factors, all unrelated to discrimination:

Men tend to drive faster than women. This leads to an increase in pay because they handle more customers per hour.
Uber pays a “compensating differential” for driving in high-crime areas and areas with high concentrations of bars. Men tend to drive in the more lucrative areas not only because they accept the risk but also because they are inclined to live nearer to or within these areas compared with women.
Drivers who work 30 or more hours per week compared to those that work fewer than 10 hours per week make 9 percent more per hour. Why is that? There is much to gain from experience at Uber such as when and where to drive, or which trips a driver should accept or reject. The researchers stated, “Male drivers accumulate more experience than women by driving more each week and being less likely to stop driving with Uber.”

Experience in other studies is typically measured by years of employment or a worker’s age which are notoriously poor ways of ascertaining work experience. As the Uber study suggests, experience differentials between men and women may be underestimated in previous studies and “can lead to biased estimates of the job-flexibility penalty.” Put another way, by working fewer hours, women are not only earning less pay than men but also accumulating less experience. † The Stanford team concludes:

Even in the absence of discrimination and in flexible labor markets, women’s relatively high opportunity cost of non-paid work time and gender-based differences in preferences and constraints can sustain a gender pay gap.

A study by two Harvard economists on bus and train operators produced similar results—the pay gap in favor of men is due to the differential choice preferences of men and women. 6 Even though “in a unionized environment where work tasks are similar, hourly wages are identical, and tenure dictates promotions, female workers earn $0.89 on the male-worker dollar.” The same study revealed that women were also less likely than men to game the scheduling system by trading off work hours at regular wages for overtime hours at premium wages.

Economists at Cornell University 7 , 8 have recently completed two extremely detailed and extensive reviews of the research literature demonstrating factors that influence the gender pay gap. A few of them are obvious. Gender differences in choice of college majors funnel women into lower paying careers. For example, women tend to avoid majoring in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs resulting in fewer women in these relatively high-paying careers. Women also tend to avoid jobs requiring extensive training specific to the company they are working for, i.e., training that does not help them with other companies.

Although both men and women quit their jobs at about the same rate “all else being equal,” they quit for different reasons. Men quit for reasons primarily related to the job; in contrast, women quit, for the most part, because of family-related reasons. As a result, women’s wages are affected adversely compared to men probably because women miss out on experience through training. Married women and mothers focus on home and family reducing the number of hours they spend in the labor market. Not surprisingly, research has found that the more hours women spend doing housework, the lower their wages in the market.

We should foster working environments that reward the most qualified and competent candidates, encouraged to participate irrespective of their gender.

The choice families make regarding their working locations also impact wages. Men are still the primary wage earners in families, and families tend to choose the location of the husband’s work as opposed to where the wife works (probably because, on average, men tend to focus on careers while women tend to prioritize family). Recent research in the U.S. and Great Britain has revealed that total family earnings increase significantly while the wife’s earnings decline when the family relocates. 9 As a result, although women may enter into traditionally male-oriented occupations, they often select careers that are flexible geographically (e.g., physicians, pharmacists, managers, accountants, etc.). 10 , 11

But the largest single impact on the gender wage gap appears to be the difference in pay between the careers men and women choose (as much as a third of the gap!). The companies women tend to gravitate toward are those that pay both men and women lower wages whereas men tend to be concentrated in firms that pay more to both men and women . Women may consciously be choosing companies that are less stressful and offer more flexible work hours, but pay less than those where greater demands are made. As Blau and Kahn explain:

Men are found to place a higher value on money, to have higher self-esteem, to be less risk averse, more competitive, self-confident and disagreeable, and to believe that they control their own fate (an internal, as opposed to external, locus of control) to a greater extent than women.

From a broader perspective, men may have traditionally needed to excel in these arenas not only to provide for their families but also to succeed in competing with other men for mates. It is well established that men spend longer hours in their jobs, tend to place work over family, and take less time off from their jobs, which has a large impact on wages. One study presented men and women in the laboratory with a task to solve under two conditions of compensation—in a “noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme.” 12 There were no differences between the performance of men and women, but 73 percent of the men preferred the competitive tournament scenario compared to 35 percent of the women.

The competitiveness of men translates from the laboratory into real-life performance benefits. Researchers have found that high school boys and girls have, on average, similar academic abilities. However, boy’s higher level of competitiveness correlates with their choosing to go into “more prestigious academic tracks” than do girls. 13 Field research substantiates these results. In a large study, economists posted online job advertisements in 16 major cities that randomly varied the advertisements in their compensation regimes. Based on the 9,000 people assessing the job advertisements, the researchers were able to conclude that, “women disproportionately shy away from competitive work settings.” 14 Increasing the competition within the workplace also appears to increase the performance of men relative to women. 15 , 16 Many studies have also found that on average not only do women shy away from risk, but their wages are lower due to having greater risk aversion than men. 17 Controlling for extraneous effects, employers tend to pay more to entice workers to accept risk.

Yet another primary influence on the gender pay gap is a preference by women for what economists refer to as “work-force interruptions,” which include flexibility (such as working at home or at convenient times) and working fewer hours (a decision not to put in the long hours required by some jobs). Numerous recent studies have explored the impact of workforce interruptions and shorter hours, and it is worth discussing them in detail because they are pertinent within the context of the “glass ceiling,” a term that refers to the discriminatory barriers hindering women from attaining top-level, high-paying jobs in the labor market.

One of these studies followed MBA graduates from a distinguished program and found that women and men began their careers at nearly the same pay, but their pay diverged over time and men were paid more. The conclusion of the research posited that the gender pay gap can be attributed almost entirely to the fewer weekly hours women worked and the larger number of “career interruptions” women took compared to men. 18 Another study, conducted over a fifteen-year period and focusing on lawyers, revealed an interesting trend: while gender had little impact on initial salaries, the gender pay gap significantly widened over time. This was attributed to women working shorter hours and taking time off for childbirth. 19 A recent study by Ghazala Azmat and her colleague Rosa Ferrer found a similar disparity between male and female lawyers and attributed the difference to men obtaining more clients and receiving twice as much revenue from those clients compared to women. The authors concluded the disparities between men’s and women’s earnings and promotions were due to higher workplace performance by men compared to women. 20 It is worth quoting their findings:

Possible channels of direct discrimination in law firms—whereby, for instance, senior lawyers (i.e., law firm partners) could interfere with performance—are not strong determinants of performance gaps. The presence of preschool children in the household contributes to the gaps in performance; however, it is not the only key determinant. A substantial share of the gender gap in performance is explained by aspirations to become a partner, which are likely to reflect more general career concerns as well as traditional gender roles… We find that the distribution of career aspirations differs across genders, which is reflected in the differences in performance [i.e., women do not aspire to become partners as much as their male counterparts]… One potential implication is that gender-based inequality in earnings and career outcomes might not decrease in the near future—and could even increase—as more high-skilled workers are explicitly compensated on the basis of performance.

In 2014, Harvard economist Claudia Goldin showed that the gender pay gap increases over the lifespan of laborers particularly for college-educated employees. 21 She explained that the gender pay gap can “almost entirely be explained by various factors such as hours worked, time out of the labor force, and years spent in part-time employment.” In 2017, economist Erling Barth and his colleagues evaluated the gender pay gap over the time span of employee careers by analyzing data from the 2000 Decennial Census of the United States and the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics. Their findings? The gender pay gap starts out relatively small but widens over time for both college-educated and non-college educated men and women. The largest gap is among the college educated men and women. The researchers found the gap (in both college and non-college scenarios) is primarily attributed to married women earning less and “most of the loss in earnings growth for married women, relative to married men, occurs concurrently with the arrival of children.” 22

David Lubinski and his colleagues conducted a 35-year longitudinal study following some of the most intellectually gifted people in the United States. 23 , 24 This research led to two major conclusions that tracked with other findings here. (1) Intellectually exceptional women prefer to work with people rather than “things,” unlike their male counterparts, who often exhibit the opposite preference. This aligns with other findings indicating that both women and men choose careers based on their individual strengths and interests. For example, women score higher than men on verbal abilities, while men tend to excel in mathematical abilities. And even though fewer women go into STEM (women received only 25.1 percent and 23.4 percent of the doctorates in mathematics/computer science and engineering, respectively), those that do, score similar to men in ability and interest. In other words, women who pursue careers in STEM fields exhibit exceptional mathematical and spatial reasoning abilities, and their mathematical and spatial abilities are typically greater than their verbal abilities. (2) On average, gifted men earn higher salaries than their female counterparts after 35 years. The main reason for this is that men work more hours than women suggesting once again that men put more emphasis on work than women. Not only do men work longer hours but when both genders are asked “How many hours would you choose to work if you were in the job of choice” [i.e., desired job, place of work, and the pay required] women chose fewer hours than men.

Regarding the quote at the beginning of this article, Steve Horwitz, Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise, commented on Pham and colleagues’ supply/ demand hypothesis (for example, the abundance of women as teachers in grades K–12) this way: “Those jobs tend to pay less because they are jobs where many people have the relevant skills to do them, thus employers can always find another person to fill them (male or female!), which keeps wages low. The same is true of garbage collectors, who are almost all male. Their wages are much lower than those of teachers and nurses because even more people have the relevant skills. So, perceptions of the femininity of a job [i.e., social constructionism] can’t really explain why wages are low.” 25 If more people, whether they are men or women (supply), go into specific fields, those fields will be able to pay less for workers (demand).

The Glass Ceiling

The National Science Foundation is pouring money into programs established to encourage women to enter STEM fields. For example, Howard University recently received $1.3 million for a proposal entitled “Multiple Consciousnesses: Investigating the Identities (Academic, Gender, Race, and Disability) of Black Women Undergraduate Students in STEM and Their Impact on Persistence.” 26 Funding such as this presumes the gender pay gap and the glass ceiling are due to discrimination against women. However, as we have seen, economists—many of whom are women, as cited—have challenged these assumptions.

A recent study demonstrates the impact of women’s choice on the glass ceiling. Psychologists Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary published a paper 27 documenting the gender gap in STEM fields has remained relatively constant for decades despite heroic efforts to bring women into STEM fields. 28 They discovered the largest STEM gender gaps exist in countries that test high on the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI)—a measure of the degree of parity between men and women based on 14 indicators, which include earnings, seats in parliament, the number of women relative to men that enroll in universities, life expectancy, etc. The GGGI uses a scale from 0 to 1, where 1.0 represents complete gender parity (see Figure 1). The data comes from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 29 —an educational survey of 519,334 students from 72 countries. Upon reviewing the graph, you may observe that the data might seem somewhat counterintuitive. This unexpected correlation is referred to as the educational-gender-equality paradox.

Figure 1. The Gender Gap in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education

Figure 1 . A graph of gender equality (GGGI where 1.0 = gender parity) versus the percentage of women that graduate from STEM-related fields in each country. The line represents the best-fit least squares regression.

The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) exemplify this paradox. They have established more than generous opportunities for women in maternity leave, first-rate state-provided childcare, and gender quotas for stock-market company boards. 30 Yet they have some of the largest gender gaps in the world! For example, Finland ranks second in science literacy, and girls outperform boys on the tests. However, paradoxically, the number of women graduating with STEM degrees only approaches 20 percent. In contrast, countries with treatment of women ranging from fair to poor, such as Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, and Tunisia, have over 35 percent women graduating in STEM on average.

Stoet and Geary found that “girls performed similarly or better than boys in science” in 66 percent of the countries “and in nearly all the countries, more girls appeared capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled.” They attribute the anomaly to personal academic choice related to what each gender perceives as their personal strength. Girls do better on literacy testing than they do in mathematics and science. Even though girls do better than boys in science and mathematics in many countries such as Finland, they choose fields outside of STEM. The opposite is true for boys. They do better in science and mathematics than literacy, and consequently choose STEM more than girls. The researchers also emphasize that women in less gender-equal countries may be more prone to choose STEM fields based on economic stress than personal preference.

It may be time to move away from activist ideology and acknowledge that girls and women freely choose their interests; they are not discriminated against in STEM fields, nor are they discouraged from pursuing a career in these fields. Similar holds true regarding men, even when countries such as Finland and Sweden go to extraordinary lengths to get more men into nursing and other fields traditionally dominated by women.

For a long time, radical feminists have advocated for quotas to break up the perceived patriarchal havens (often referred to as “good-ole-boy networks”) in the hopes of creating environments that support the advancement of women into senior management positions. Norway provides a notable example of the drawbacks of implementing such quotas. In 2003, Norway passed a law mandating that all publicly traded Norwegian corporations must ensure that their corporate boards comprise at least 40 percent women (or men, if the board was predominantly women). Five economists—all women—led by Marianne Bertrand have assessed the impact of the law:

…within firms that were mandated to increase female participation on their board, there is no evidence that these gains at the very top trickled down. Moreover the reform had no obvious impact on highly qualified women whose qualifications mirror those of board members but who were not appointed to boards. We observe no statistically significant change in the gender wage gaps or in female representation in top positions… Finally, there is little evidence that the reform affected the decisions of women more generally; it was not accompanied by any change in female enrollment in business education programs, or a convergence in earnings trajectories between recent male and female graduates of such programs. 31

It appears that Norway was trying to correct for a glass ceiling that did not actually exist. As reported by The Economist , the law led to a significant number of Norwegian corporations leaving the Norway stock exchange to avoid the mandated quota requirements. Of the 563 companies on the Norway stock exchange in 2003, only 179 remained by 2008. 32 Meanwhile, the observed increase in women’s leadership was the same as in neighboring Denmark, which did not implement quotas.

This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 29.2 Buy print edition Buy digital edition Subscribe to print edition Subscribe to digital edition Download our app

Simply stated, economists—many of whom are women—have found that women are more risk averse (i.e., less willing to place themselves in highly competitive job environments) and more inclined toward occupations that offer flexible hours, often in order to prioritize time with their children. Women are certainly as competent as men in STEM, but gravitate toward college majors and jobs that highlight their superior verbal and social skills. There is much more fascinating data—most of it largely absent from the public discourse—that shed light on these differences. I will discuss such scholarship from disciplines other than economics in future articles.

About the Author

Marc J. Defant is a professor of geology at the University of South Florida specializing in the study of volcanoes—more specifically, the geochemistry of volcanic rocks. He has been funded by the NSF, National Geographic , the American Chemical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences and has published in many international journals including Nature. His book Voyage of Discovery: From the Big Bang to the Ice Age is in the 2nd edition.

https://bit.ly/4d2amZW
https://bit.ly/49XFxDb
https://bit.ly/4aEQZog
https://bit.ly/3W6UvmO
https://bit.ly/3Q7Q1sg
Blau, F., & Winkler, A.E. (2018). The Economics of Women, Men, and Work , Eighth Edition. Oxford University Press.
https://bit.ly/447kEUM
https://bit.ly/3vXe5XZ
https://bit.ly/3vM6gVe
https://bit.ly/3W3PBHm
https://bit.ly/3QaLKoa
https://bit.ly/4aGtXgA
https://bit.ly/3W6Z4NY
https://bit.ly/4d3H1y9
Bertrand, M. (2011). New Perspectives On Gender. In O. Ashenfelter, & D. Card, Handbook of Labor Economics, Volume 4B . Elsevier.
https://bit.ly/3Q7sYOs
https://bit.ly/4490wkT
https://bit.ly/49K7jCX
https://bit.ly/3UmrBxF
https://bit.ly/3U4bovN
https://bit.ly/4d6cqAj
https://bit.ly/4cWi7kh
Personal communication, 2019
https://bit.ly/442RZ34
https://bit.ly/444y5Vc
National Science Foundation. (2017). Women, Minorities, and Persons With Disabilities in Science and Engineering . National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
OECD. (2016). PISA 2015 Results: Excellence and Equity in Education (Vol. 1) . OCED.
https://bit.ly/3xGI1s1
https://bit.ly/3W5jKGa

This article was published on August 23, 2024.

SKEPTIC App

Whether at home or on the go, the SKEPTIC App is the easiest way to read your favorite articles. Within the app, users can purchase the current issue and back issues. Download the app today and get a 30-day free trial subscription.

About the Society
Skepticism 101
Current Issue
Subscribe (Print)
Subscribe (Digital)
Buy Print Issues
Buy Digital Issues
Submit an article
About the Podcast
Watch/Listen
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
Google Podcasts

Expeditions

About Our Expeditions
Greenland to Nova Scotia (2024)
Ireland to Iceland (2024)
Meet the Researchers
Become Involved
1-805-576-9396
General Inquiries
Website Inquiries
Orders Support
Subscriptions Support
Change Address
Shop Online
Subscriptions
Back Issues

More From Forbes

Why asking women to lean in undermines gender equality efforts.

Share to Facebook
Share to Twitter
Share to Linkedin

Full length side view of young man and woman walking towards white ladders against coral background

Women in leadership are often encouraged to "Lean In," a phrase popularized by the book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg, the former Chief Operating Officer of Facebook. The message is clear: confidence and resilience are the keys to breaking through the glass ceiling. However, a new research study , which includes a survey of over 1100 women, finds that "lean in" messaging reduces women's motivation to protest gender inequality.

"The messages are certainly about the self and how you can build your resilience. So, by implication, there's a blame-the-victim narrative there. It's like you could get ahead if you were more resilient," says Dr Renata Bongiorno , lead author of the research and Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Bath Spa University.

While leaning in may boost an individual's sense of agency, it can inadvertently shift the focus away from addressing the systemic barriers women face and, worse still, hold women solely accountable for fixing gender inequality at work.

"It is interesting because other research did find the lean in narrative results in women being more likely to be blamed for ongoing gender inequality and more likely to be seen as responsible for fixing it", she says.

The lean in approach encourages organizational solutions focused on fixing women rather than fixing organizational policies, processes and cultures that devalue women and their contributions. Importantly, these messages also damage men's perceptions of women.

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, "it makes men feel like women could get ahead if they were more resilient. both men and women are more likely to blame women for gender inequality and think women are responsible for fixing," says dr bongiorno..

While it is enticing to believe that women alone can overcome gender inequality, Dr Bongiorno says a lack of individual resilience or perseverance is not the reason for the poor representation of women in leadership. Moreover, this narrative is counterproductive as it prevents collective action.

To overcome these challenges, Dr Bongiorno shares three actions companies can take to ensure their gender equality efforts have the right impact.

Examine Existing Efforts

There are countless self-help books and programs designed to help women fix themselves to get ahead. These programs and trainings tell women they must upskill themselves, join women's groups, find a mentor, attend conferences, learn to negotiate, speak up, ask for a pay rise, and own their power. However, Dr Bongiorno says initiatives like these can make women feel worse about themselves.

"Women realize their organization isn't actually going to do anything to change itself. It's all about how you must be more resilient in this organization to fit in."

While individual-focused initiatives can support personal development, they do not address the systemic barriers gender inequality creates. For example, there is a commonly held belief that women are not paid the same as men because they can't negotiate and don't ask for a pay rise as frequently as their male colleagues. But, a 2018 research study finds that women do ask for a pay raise just as often as men, but they are less likely to be given one because of gender bias.

If companies want to advance gender equity, they must examine their existing efforts to understand how many solutions focus on changing women rather than changing the organization's culture, systems, policies and processes.

Get The Balance Right

Once organizations have reviewed their existing efforts, they need to ensure there is a balance between individual and organizational solutions. At a minimum, organizations should aim to have at least one organizational-wide initiative for every initiative focused on women.

"If organizations focused as much on how they will change their systems and processes, it would make it easier for women to progress. But it's often the case that they don't have those types of interventions because they're a lot harder to change," she says.

When companies don't get the balance right, Dr Bongiorno says it perpetuates gender inequality and places the blame for this on women.

Enroll Men To Be A Part Of The Solution

Dr Bongiorno believes that fix-the-women solutions are popular because these initiatives make it seem like companies are committed to tackling gender inequality even though the problem is not being addressed.

"I think these strategies can be popular with leadership because it's like, 'Oh, look, we are doing something, but we don't actually have to change ourselves; we just have to make women more resilient'. I don't think the solution is to focus on ourselves continuously or how we can ride it out alone. It's about support from others," she says.

Every organization can educate men on the barriers women experience and then engage them to identify solutions to remove these obstacles. It's time to rethink the fix-the-women narrative and ensure that company strategies for advancing women don't inadvertently hold women back.

Dr Renata Bongiorno, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Bath Spa University

Editorial Standards
Reprints & Permissions

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts.

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's Terms of Service. We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
Content that otherwise violates our site's terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
Actions that otherwise violate our site's terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

Stay on topic and share your insights
Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
Protect your community.
Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's Terms of Service.

Labour, Gender Inequalities and the SDGs: Why Is Decent Work a Gendered Question?

First Online: 23 August 2024

Cite this chapter

Louisa Acciari 3

Part of the book series: Sustainable Development Goals Series ((SDGS))

This chapter discusses the interconnection between the SDGs decent work and gender equality and argues that decent work is a feminist and gendered issue. Given the gendered stratification of the labour market and the impact of unpaid care work on women’s opportunities, I demonstrate that decent work cannot be achieved without working simultaneously on gender equality. To do so, SDG 8 must include a gender perspective and revise its indicators in order to recognise the value of care work and the specificities of women’s labour. Based on two empirical examples of campaigns developed by grassroots women’s groups in Brazil, namely, the Institute Women of the Amazon and the National Federation of Domestic Workers, this chapter further provides some concrete ideas to rethink and adapt the SDG decent work with a gender perspective. Indeed, the work of these women shows the importance of care work and reproductive labour and creates the necessary connections between gender, care and labour to foster a more inclusive and more sustainable model of development.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

Get 10 units per month
Download Article/Chapter or eBook
1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
Cancel anytime
Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Available as EPUB and PDF
Durable hardcover edition
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

DIEESE (2023), Inserção das Mulheres no Mercado de Trabalho: https://www.dieese.org.br/infografico/2023/infograficosMulheres2023.html

ILO decent work agenda: https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/decent-work/lang%2D%2Den/index.htm

UN SDGs: https://sdgs.un.org/goals

DIEESE (2022a), Trabalho Doméstico no Brasil : https://www.dieese.org.br/infografico/2022/trabalhoDomestico.html , last consulted on 19/12/2022

Spotlight Report: https://gtagenda2030.org.br/relatorio-luz/

DIEESE (2022b), Boletim especial 8 de março – dia da mulher : https://www.dieese.org.br/boletimespecial/2022/mulher.html

PAHO (2021), Gendered Health Analysis: Covid-19 in the Americas : https://iris.paho.org/bitstream/handle/10665.2/55432/PAHOEGCCOVID-19210006_eng.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y

SOF (2020), Sem Parar: o trabalho e a vida das mulheres na pandemia : https://mulheresnapandemia.sof.org.br

IMA’s website: https://imabr.org

Agenda 2030 of the Women of the Amazon: https://imabr.org/agenda-2021-30/

See FENATRAD’s website: https://fenatrad.org.br/2020/03/18/cuida-de-quem-te-cuida-proteja-sua-trabalhadora-domestica/

Acciari L (2019) Decolonising labour, reclaiming subaltern epistemologies: Brazilian domestic workers and the international struggle for labour rights. Contexto Int 41(1):39–63

Article Google Scholar

Acciari L, dos Santos Brito C (2021) Impactos da Crise Pandêmica no Trabalho Doméstico: Velhas Causas, Novas Consequências. In: Pinto PCP et al (eds) Os sindicatos das trabalhadoras domésticas em tempos de pandemia: memórias da resistência. FACOS - UFSM, Santa Maria, pp 32–50

Google Scholar

Acciari L, del Carmen Britez J, del Carmen Morales Pérez A (2021) Right to health, right to live: domestic workers facing the COVID-19 crisis in Latin America. Gend Dev 29(1):11–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2021.1885213

Acciari L, dos Santos Brito C, Pinto C (2023) Essential yet excluded: Covid-19 and the decent work deficit for domestic workers in Brazil. Int Labour Rev. Accepted Manuscript. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ilr.12402

Acker J (2004) Gender, capitalism and globalization. Crit Sociol 30(1):17–41

Berkhout SG, Richardson L (2020) Identity, politics, and the pandemic: why is COVID-19 a disaster for feminism(s)? Hist Philos Life Sci 42(4):49. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-020-00346-7

Bernardino-Costa J (2007) Colonialidade do Poder e Subalternidade: os sindicatos das trabalhadoras domésticas no Brasil. Revista Brasileia do Caribe VII(14):311–345

Bhattacharya T (2017) Introduction: mapping social reproduction theory. In: Bhattacharya PT (ed) Social reproduction theory: remapping class, recentering oppression. Pluto Press, London, pp 1–21

Biroli F (2015) Responsabilidades, cuidado e democracia. Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política 18:81–117

Borah Hazarika O, Das S (2021) Paid and unpaid work during the Covid-19 pandemic: a study of the gendered division of domestic responsibilities during lockdown. J Gend Stud 30(4):429–439. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2020.1863202

Branicki LJ (2020) COVID-19, ethics of care and feminist crisis management. Gender Work Organiz 27(5):872–883. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12491

Camilletti E, Nesbitt-Ahmed Z (2022) COVID-19 and a 'crisis of care': a feminist analysis of public policy responses to paid and unpaid care and domestic work. Int Labour Rev 161(2):195–218. https://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12354

Carneiro S (2018) Gênero e raça na sociedade brasileira. In: Carneiro PS (ed) Escritos de uma vida. Letramento, Belo Horizonte, pp 153–186

Castro MG (1992) Alquimia de categorias sociais na produção dos sujeitos políticos: gênero, raça e geração entre líderes do sindicato de trabalhadores domésticos em Salvador. Estudos Feministas (0):57–73

Dlamini NJ (2021) Gender-based violence, twin pandemic to COVID-19. Crit Sociol 47(4–5):583–590. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920520975465

Federici S (2004) Caliban and the witch: women, the body and primitive accumulation, 1st edn. Autonomedia, New York

Federici S (2012) Revolution at point zero: housework, reproduction and feminist struggle. Common Notions Brooklyn, New York

Fortier N (2020) Covid-19, gender inequality, and the responsibility of the state. Int J Wellbeing 10(3):77–93

Fraser N (2016) Contradictions of capital and care. New Left Rev 100:99–117

Gonzalez L (1984) Racismo e Sexismo na Cultura Brasileira. In: Revista Ciências Sociais Hoje. ANPOCS, pp 223–244

Hirata H, Kergoat D (1994) A classe operária tem dois sexos. Estudos Feministas 2(1):93–100

ILO (2013) Domestic workers across the world: global and regional statistics and the extent of legal protection. ILO, Geneva

ILO (2021) Making decent work a reality for domestic workers: Progress and prospects ten years after the adoption of the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189). ILO, Geneva

Inter-American Development Bank (2020) What is the labor market like for women in Latin America and the Caribbean?. IDB. https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/viewer/What-is-The-Labor-Market-like-for-Women-in-Latin-America-and-the-Caribbean.pdf

Lewis H (2020, 19 March) The Coronavirus is a disaster for feminism: pandemics affect men and women differently. The Atlantic

Mies M (2014) Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale: women in the International Division of labour. Zed Books, London

Book Google Scholar

OECD (2020) Women at the core of the fight against COVID-19 crisis. OECD, Paris

Pateman C (1988) The sexual contract. Polity, Cambridge

Perrons D (2010) Gender, work and ‘market’ values. Renewal J Lab Polit 18(1/2):34–42

Pinto CP (2021) Organização sindical no 'novo normal': informar, mobilizar e empoderar as trabalhadoras domésticas. In: Pinto PCP et al (eds) Os sindicatos das trabalhadoras domésticas em tempos de pandemia: memórias da resistência. FACOS - UFSM, Santa Maria, pp 142–160

Ryan NE, El Ayadi A (2020) A call for a gender-responsive, intersectional approach to address Covid-19. Glob Public Health 15(9):1404–1412

Saffioti H (1969) A mulher na sociedade de classes (mito e realidade). Quatro Artes, São Paulo

UN Women (2020) From insight to action. UN Women, New York. https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2020/gender-equality-in-the-wake-of-covid-2019-en.pdf?la=en&vs=5142

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Centre of Gender and Disaster, University College London, London, UK

Louisa Acciari

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Louisa Acciari .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

International Relations Institute, University of Brasília, Brasília, Brasília, Brazil

Thiago Gehre Galvao

Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa, Brazil

Henrique Zeferino de Menezes

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Acciari, L. (2024). Labour, Gender Inequalities and the SDGs: Why Is Decent Work a Gendered Question?. In: Galvao, T.G., de Menezes, H.Z. (eds) The Quest for the Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-59279-9_11

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-59279-9_11

Published : 23 August 2024

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-031-59278-2

Online ISBN : 978-3-031-59279-9

eBook Packages : Earth and Environmental Science Earth and Environmental Science (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

Accelerating progress on gender equality is key for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

A high-level event at the united nations discusses un women’s gender equality accelerators to drive collective action..

Share to Facebook
Share to Twitter
Share to LinkedIn
Share to E-mail

On the occasion of the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on July 15, 2024, UN Women convened feminists, experts, UN officials and other key development actors to present and discuss the Gender Equality Accelerators (GEAs) for the SDGs, particularly SDG 5. The Accelerators are solutions to drive focused, collective action to speed and scale up results for women and girls.

In her video message, Sima Bahous , Executive Director of UN Women, reiterated the relevance of the Beijing Platform for Action and highlighted the stark reality presented in the 2023 SDG Gender Snapshot report. Despite global efforts, the world is lagging in achieving gender equality. She shared key data points illustrating the slow progress in women's participation in decision-making, economic insecurity, and ongoing violence against women.

“Economic insecurity continues to be a great concern,” she said. “Despite the global unemployment rate hitting a historic low of 5 per cent in 2023, women continue to face higher unemployment rates than men. Women continue to carry the responsibility of unpaid domestic and care work, spending 2.5 times more hours a day on this.”

Michelle Bachelet , former President of Chile, former Executive Director of UN Women, and former United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights, reminded us in her keynote speech that "the importance of achieving gender equality has no parallel. Our world will not accomplish its full potential if we don't harness all that we can contribute with our ideas, vision, and experience. ”

Participants acknowledged that neglecting SDG 5 (Gender Equality) endangers the entire 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and rallied around the need for collective action. “The Ten Gender Equality Accelerators are vital markers for progress, ensuring focus and accountability in our efforts through the remainder of the decade,” said the President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations, Ambassador Paula Narváez .

Ten Gender Equality Accelerators

From increasing women’s equal participation in decision-making to supporting countries in improving the production and use of gender data, , the GEAs aim to address the most pressing challenges in realizing the human rights of all women and girls and achieving gender equality across the SDGs. They are evidence-based programmatic frameworks that translate international guidance on gender equality into local initiatives.

The accelerators are built on successful joint programmes with UN partners and tested approaches offered to the Resident Coordinator system and UN Country Teams for collective action. In her intervention, UN WomenDeputy Executive Director Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda stressed that, "we must leverage existing and new partnerships with UN organizations, national governments, civil society, local women's rights organizations, and the private sector to work together and focus on systems change."

Focusing on the Transforming Care Systems Accelerator, a fireside chat engaged participants in a discussion on the innovative solutions and collaborative efforts needed to turn goals into reality. "Transforming care systems is essential for building resilience to crises and achieving gender equality," said Cynthia Samuel-Olonjuwon , ILO Special Representative to the UN. Referring to the relevance of the Transforming Care System Accelerator, she emphasized that, "by supporting workers with family responsibilities and ensuring quality care, we can advance social justice and decent work for all in the recognition that care work, paid or unpaid, is essential to all other work."

Hugo Allan García , Subsecretary of Planning of Guatemala shared that his country has included a gender equality approach into its national planning system, adding that, “this approach serves as an analytical criterion and methodological tool to understand the power dynamics and gender gaps in the access to goods and services, exercising rights, participation and equal opportunities for all."

Looking ahead, the Call to Action is clear. Achieving gender equality and women's rights demands strategic and coordinated action. All are invited to use the GEAs to step up collective efforts and drive progress across the entire 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

For more information, please read our Gender Equality Accelerators booklet and brochure available on UN Women’s website.

Generation Equality
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Gender equality and women’s empowerment

Women in Afghanistan have not stopped striving for their rights, and neither should we

Hawa Yokie spoke as a youth panellist at an event during the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN Headquarters in New York

Interview with Hawa Yokie on youth-led innovation in Sierra Leone

From World Champion to leading the way for female track coaches in the Paris 2024 Olympics – Interview with Janeth Jepkosgei

Open access
Published: 23 August 2024

Tackling gender disparities in energy research: a diagnostic tool for equality in research centres

Sara Sánchez-López 1 ,
Rocío Poveda-Bautista 1 ,
Carmen Corona-Sobrino 2 ,
Paula Otero-Hermida 1 &
Mónica García-Melón 1

Energy, Sustainability and Society volume 14 , Article number: 51 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

In a case study in Spain, the unequal proportion of men and women in a research organization in the energy sector is severe, and long-established dynamics that might determine differences in access to leadership positions and inequalities in research careers are evident. The gender gap in historically masculinized fields, such as energy engineering reflects more than simply the differences in male and female values and personalities. This study seeks to explore the gender gap in energy research centres and to identify barriers that potentially hinder the research careers of women. It proposes the development of a diagnostic tool, based upon indicators, to monitor and evaluate gender roles and inequalities in the management of research centres for identifying and addressing the dynamics and obstacles that hinder women's progress in the energy sector and their potential contribution to the field. This participatory multicriteria-based tool prioritizes the proposed indicators by their influence and importance in the context of energy research and applies it to the monitoring of a specific Spanish energy research centre.

The results are threefold: (i) the methodology is adaptable to different research centres; (ii) the analysis of indicators’ prioritization could lead to recommendations that should be addressed first; (iii) the diagnostic tool used in this in-depth case study of an energy research centre in Spain allowed results to be achieved in terms of gender dynamics. Two indicators stand out as the most relevant in our analysis: gender diversity in leadership positions and uncomplicated application of work–life balance measures. In this case study, the measurement of the first indicator has drawn unsatisfactory results, and the research of the latter is considered still insufficient. In conclusion, this difference becomes a vicious or negative circle for attracting and retaining more women to the research centre. Despite these results, no gender gap seems to be recognized and thus, no measures are being taken to improve the situation.

Conclusions

Comprehensive data and contextualized monitoring are necessary to effectively study and enhance the presence and participation of women in the energy science sector. This approach, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques, is suitable for any research centre that would like to monitor its gender gap, identify potential sources of inequity and address them.

Globally, the limited access to energy disproportionately affects women [ 1 ] and highlights the importance of considering gender in discussions about fair energy distribution and its role in development [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Despite this, the energy sector remains predominantly male-dominated. Not only do women face greater difficulties in accessing energy resources, but they also “continue to be an unrealized potential asset for the development of the energy sector” [ 6 ].

Women bring distinct economic and social capitals to the table [ 7 ], and lack of gender balance might not only be a matter of fairness and social justice, but could also be detrimental to innovative research. The involvement of women in the field of energy, and particularly in the context of sustainability [ 6 , 8 , 9 ], has been identified as pivotal for addressing emerging future advances, governance structures, and frameworks through which we might tackle the required issues, among others [ 10 ]. However, their participation remains limited not only to energy production, but also to the development of alternative consumption and production patterns [ 7 , 11 , 12 ]. This similarly occurs in the production of knowledge within the field where only 15.7 percent of energy scholarship authors have been women [ 13 ].

It is widely argued that one of the problems in an area like engineering or energy is the low number of women students. At a macro level, focusing on the case of Spain, where the study case is located, the proportion of women researchers in Spanish universities is 43.67% [ 14 ]. However, the main problem lies in the unequal distribution according to career progression, with only 25.6% of women reaching the highest category (full professor) and even more at the study phase. In the field of engineering, for instance, only 9% women are to be found in the highest category. In addition, only 52.4% of women have attained permanent positions in the system [ 14 ].

At the meso-level of the university institution examined, 31.98% of the staff are women [ 15 ], of which only 30% have attained permanent positions. In the area of engineering, this percentage drops to 21.39% of women researchers with permanent contracts [ 15 ]. Regarding the presence of women in public research centres in Spain, only 26.8% of women hold a permanent position working in the field of “natural resources”, which includes the energy sector [ 16 ]. This figure improves substantially in the initial categories with 57.7% of doctoral students being women [ 16 ]. Furthermore, in the case of the Spanish energy sector, only 22.2% of Spain’s scientific production on renewable energies in 2022 was led by women researchers [ 17 ].

While a significant body of literature and diverse approaches to addressing the scarcity of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) are available, a notable gap in the case of the energy sector is evident [ 10 , 13 , 18 ]. The presence and participation of women in the field of energy have been studied in boards and management groups of large energy companies [ 19 ], in decision-making processes in the renewable energy sector [ 20 ] or in energy policymaking [ 12 ]. However, to the best of our knowledge, gender roles and inequalities in the management of research energy centres aimed to address the gender gap remain unexplored in the scientific literature, and our study is the first that seeks to specifically address the monitoring of energy research centres.

Monitoring the gender gap in science: contextualization and indicators used at the organizational level

In Europe, gender gap monitoring in science, research and innovation is highly directed by European Union (EU) approaches. Specifically, the Strategic Vision of the European Research Area has set as a goal for 2030 that half of all scientific personnel, in all disciplines and at all levels of the scientific system, should be women. The aim is to break the horizontal and vertical segregation that currently exists in European science, especially in historically masculinized fields like energy [ 21 ]. Thus, EU members such as Spain have advanced legislation in this area to achieve the Strategic Vision of the European Research Area.

The indicators used to monitor policies in European reports, such as She Figures and their counterpart reports in Spain, tend to focus primarily on providing numbers of men and women. Therefore, despite its relevance, they have scarce information on how gender dynamics work in scientific and innovative working environments, where personnel perform their functions and interact on a daily basis [ 22 , 23 , 24 ].

The meso-organizational level is key in the “quality of equality” which means that inclusion is not merely having women but where—in which areas, in which roles—and how are they included [ 25 ] is essential; and where—without this information, it is not possible to understand why, for instance, many women leave engineering careers or whether women or other underrepresented collectives in the discipline have a similar wellbeing status.

The organizational level includes crucial issues for equal access and quality such as staff awareness of equality measures, the distribution of tasks and responsibilities, management of projects, recognition, work culture, work–life balance culture, and use of time or personnel selection. At this level, there is a concentration of conditioning factors to accumulate merits in a markedly meritocratic science system. In this context, which is depicted as neutral and universal within the meritocratic system, it becomes clear that the system is vulnerable to gender dynamics which apparently affects objective processes such as hiring and promotion [ 26 ] or the definition of academic excellence [ 27 ].

The organizational level is crucial in science development and the lack of indicators may result from intrinsic difficulties in gender monitoring. Monitoring is usually a synonym for quantitative approaches which often tends to focus on public information like how many of each sex are to be found. On the other hand, gender dynamics are difficult to capture without perception and other qualitative indicators [ 28 ] which are more difficult to operationalize, and which often require the preparation of surveys or choosing other methods like organizing focus groups to gather primary data. However, the effort can be worthwhile considering that monitoring is not unambiguous in its use and that indicators are not equally relevant. Monitoring can be applied to control policy development, distribute funding, compare organizations, or check the advance of some implemented measures, for instance. Those purposes and the ultimate justification, such as social justice or achieving efficiency, determine institutional logics that affected the final use of monitoring and resulted in different indicator panels which also reflects a different understanding of the issue that is monitored [ 23 ].

Measuring gender at the organizational level pursues some primary goals: diagnosis and learning. However, indicators receive their significance from institutional practices [ 29 ]. Thus, contextualized monitoring through gathering secondary and primary data, both quantitative and qualitative, is crucial and it becomes essential to go beyond “counting heads” [ 30 ] to understand not only the number of women present in energy research centres, but also the dynamics that hinder the development of women’s careers in these areas, i.e. the distribution of tasks, management, projects, and recognition. In Europe, gender gap indicators are focused on policy monitoring at the national level, while the organizational level still needs to be developed, which is another challenge to be addressed [ 23 ].

Contextualization or context-sensitive monitoring implies a better understanding of different levels as the centre and the research system provides in regards to the conditions of understanding research excellence, access to positions or research funding. This requires expert integration in the monitoring process, to interpret the relevance and cross-influence of the indicators, as is given in more detail in the methods part. Thus, it is crucial to include the context where gendered energy research takes place and to provide a systemic contextualization [ 12 ].

We developed a tool based upon performance indicators to monitor and evaluate gender roles and inequalities in research centres. The tool provides feedback to the literature review and quantitative and qualitative inputs at the organizational level which is a sensible step within the overall gender and science context, with a focus on Spain in this case. This perspective also facilitates the integration of the inherent complexity of measuring relational dynamics in organizations, which contributes to the gender gap [ 31 ]. The gender gap should be understood as a multi-dimensional concept: people involved, relational dynamics [ 31 ], and organizational culture. Therefore, it should be treated as a multi-criteria problem and studied using multi-criteria decision-making methods (MCDM). These methods are highly appreciated for developing monitoring tools [ 22 ], for example, the work of [ 32 ] where a multi-criteria decision model is used to measure sustainable energy development efficiency [ 22 ]. See [ 33 ] for more information on MCDM.

We propose a methodology for an in-depth study of research centres investigating energy-related issues. This methodology can be adapted to develop tools to monitor and diagnose different research centres and their specific contexts.

Our proposal will make three contributions to the energy research field: first, by presenting the possible indicators at the organizational level in research centres and a methodology to prioritize them according to the centre’s needs; second, by monitoring and presenting results of a specific research centre in the energy field; and third, by including recommendations to address the gender dynamics contributing to indicate gender gaps within the monitored centre.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: “ Methodology ” section presents the research methodology and methods employed. “ Results ” section shows the results and “ Discussion ” section discusses the implications and is divided into the case of study recommendations and general contributions to the energy field. Finally, “ Conclusions ” section summarizes the conclusions of the research.

Methodology

The proposed methodological approach of this research is presented in Fig. 1 . It is developed through two main stages: the design of the general methodology and the application to a specific energy research centre.

Methodology diagram. The stages of the methodology correspond to the sections where these tasks are described in the paper

Our diagnostic tool is developed in two stages. The first is generic and useful for any public research organization. The second is specific to a particular research centre in the energy field. In other words, we obtain generic indicators that can be used to measure any organization and we adapt them to the context and then use them to monitor and diagnose a particular Spanish Energy Research Centre.

The goal of the first is to identify all the relevant perspectives and dimensions related to the gender gap and to determine a specific list of performance indicators to monitor and evaluate gender roles and inequalities in research centres. This general methodology employs an integrated MCDM-based approach using a combination of Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Network Process (ANP) to determine the most influential criteria for the gender gap in research centres. The combination of these two methodologies (DANP) is novel in the context of gender policies and integrates the benefits of both methods. ANP [ 34 ] allows us a full analysis of the influence of all the factors that make up a network (see [ 34 ] for more information on ANP). In addition, DEMATEL [ 35 ] permits a cause and effect analysis of the various network elements involved [ 36 , 37 ].

The aim of the second is to monitor the performance of a selected Spanish Energy Research Centre (ERC). All the indicators will be measured and analysed according to the results of importance and influence obtained for each.

This stage of the methodology has involved the thorough documentation of the institution itself (bibliometric indicators and other registered numerical indicators), as well as the document analysis of relevant scientific legislation. The analysis of hiring and promotion processes, among other variables, has entailed an in-depth examination of the laws and regulations governing these processes in Spain. A comprehensive study of documentation on Spanish state-level legislation and university organization was conducted to understand the specificities of the case study in the scientific context. A document analysis was carried out to analyse and perform an in-depth study of the chosen case study. Likewise, the content analysis of scientific Spanish legislation [ 38 ] and scientific reports [ 16 , 28 ] have also served methodologically when designing the script of the in-depth interviews. For methodological reasons, a binary gender system has been assumed in the construction of indicators and in the analysis of results. Nevertheless, in the sociodemographic questions of the questionnaire, the possibility of including other gender identities has been provided. This assumption of the binary system aims to facilitate both the research and the data interpretation. However, the authors are aware of the limitations posed by this binary approach and acknowledge the diverse expressions and identities that may manifest within such contexts.

Finally, some recommendations and guidelines will be addressed to the management team of the research centre in order to target their gender gap.

General methodology

Selection of indicators and relevant aspects.

Focusing on the selection of indicators, [ 22 ] proposed a list for Research and Innovation purposes from a Responsible Perspective for the Spanish context subsequent to an in-depth review of the existing indicators provided by relevant reports, such as the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) European Expert Group , the collection of She Figures EU reports, or the Spanish version of She Figures, Científicas en Cifras . Based on [ 22 ] study and previous knowledge, we developed a general, extensive list of indicators that should be considered in the analysis of the gender gap in research centres (Table 1 ). This preliminary list of indicators is organized into 6 main groups, which are the most common when analysing the gender gap in research centres.

Prioritization of indicators by experts

The DANP technique is used to evaluate the gender gap criteria (indicators), allowing us to rank these criteria in relation to the objective: evaluate gender roles and inequalities in research centres.

Selection of experts

Our methodology considers the inclusion of energy stakeholders, not only gender experts [ 39 ], in an interdisciplinary approach that combines experts from social sciences, politics, and engineering for methodological development. This interdisciplinary approach aligns with the underlying debate about the topic in energy studies [ 40 ].

The research team includes various types of experts, encompassing those dedicated to gender issues within the Spanish scientific system and engineers specializing in energy. The MCDM technique we use relies heavily on the quality, rather than the quantity, of these experts due to its semi-quantitative and expert-oriented nature [ 41 ]. It is vital that the experts display both a comprehensive understanding of the implications of their fields within the context of our case study and a holistic perspective on research centre activities. In order to ensure a comprehensive assessment, our DANP model requires multiple experts on each panel for cross-verification purposes. Our panel, comprised five individuals—one political scientist, one sociologist, and three engineers—was initially chosen to define the DANP model and validate context-based indicators suitable for any research centre. Recognizing the need to integrate the specific dynamics of the energy engineering sector, we expanded our expert panel by including two additional individuals with in-depth knowledge of the field of energy research. With a total of 7 experts, this panel evaluated context-based indicators, weighting them based on their impact on gender equity.

A detailed description of the cross-experience of our 7 experts is shown in Table 2

Model definition

The ranking model is built upon a network of criteria that have mutual influence. These criteria are derived from a literature review and the context is validated by the panel of 5 experts through a first participatory session.

The relevance of the indicators is heavily affected by the different contexts. The panel evaluates the criteria (indicators) integrating the context. Expert prioritization pinpoints the causal relations and diverse shapes of a specific problem that refuses to be measured.

The objective will be to identify which are important and which are crucial in the specific setting of the energy research centre within both the university and the Spanish research system, considering a panoramic view of the gathered data. This will contribute significantly to an interpretation of the results and the formation of recommendations. The aim is to tailor the general gender gap indicators for research centres (preliminary list) into indicators suitable for monitoring Spanish energy research centres (list of context-based indicators).

For this purpose, we designed a questionnaire that was used to ask the experts individually to elicit their judgements.

Application to a specific Energy Research Centre

Weighting and interactions of indicators.

After constructing the model and receiving validation from the experts, the DANP method is applied in five steps:

Step 1: Generation of Direct-Relation Matrix A. Firstly, measuring the relationship between criteria requires the design of a comparison scale on a 0–4 scale:

0 (no influence)

1 (low influence)

2 (medium influence)

3 (high influence)

4 (very high influence)

Next, experts make pairwise comparisons of the influences between the criteria. Then, the initial data are obtained as the direct-relation matrix. Matrix A is an nxn matrix in which aij denotes the degree to which criterion i affects criterion j .

Step 2: Normalizing the direct-relation matrix. On the basis of direct-relation matrix A , the normalized direct-relation matrix X can be obtained through equations:

where a ij is the values of the direct-relation matrix.

Step 3: Obtaining the total-relation matrix: T can be obtained by using (Eq. 5 ), in which the I is denoted as the identity matrix:

Step 4: Obtaining the causal diagram of the criteria. Parameters D and Rare obtained for each criterion from matrix T using the following equations:

The cause–effect diagram permits the analysis of the degree of prominence, given by the sum of D and R (horizontal axis), and the degree of cause or effect, given by the subtraction of D and R (vertical axis).

Step 5: Normalizing each column of the T matrix (unweighted) by its sum, we obtain the weighted supermatrix:

where w ij is the values of the weighted supermatrix and t ij is the values of the total-relation matrix.

Step 6: Calculating the limit matrix. In this step, the weighted matrix is multiplied by itself until all its columns become equal, i.e. the values converge, and the process ends. This way, each element’s individual influences on the network’s other elements are obtained from this limit supermatrix.

The criteria values are extracted from the vector of the limit supermatrix and normalized by the sum to obtain their final weights. In this way, we can obtain the criteria ranking, which will allow us to understand the decision profile of the experts.

After receiving individual assessment results of DANP, each expert validates her/his own results. If the results are unsatisfactory, she/he revises the results of the pairwise comparisons to ensure that the results are coherent with her/his knowledge and overall assessment.

Monitoring of the research centre

Online survey: primary data.

In addition to the personal interviews, an online survey was designed and circulated to reach as many people as possible within the organization. The study aimed to obtain qualitative and quantitative information to study the gender gap in Energy Research Centres and to identify barriers that potentially hinder the careers of women. Data were gathered through single and multiple choice, and open-ended questions by using Qualtrics software, Version July 2023. Copyright© 2023 Qualtrics. Gender and year of birth were requested for data analysis purposes but no information that would potentially identify the respondent was collected. The survey consisted of 20 questions addressing the level of seniority achieved, the perception of the formal and informal atmosphere of the organization, awareness of the equity plan, use of work–life balance measures, and experience in leading projects.

The survey was sent to the head of the research centre to be internally disseminated by email to all the workers of the institution. Our population is all the researchers who were registered as members of the ERC in May 2023, i.e. 48 people. A total of 36 people answered and, according to their distribution by professional category and gender, it was concluded that the sample was sufficiently representative. The only a priori bias detected was motivation, i.e. the proportion of women in relation to the total number of employees answering the questionnaire is higher than that of men. However, both gender groups are sufficiently represented.

The content validity of the survey was initially tested on a sample of 10 people from diverse academic backgrounds residing in Spain. The survey was adjusted by integrating the feedback received. The data from the pilot are not included in the results.

Databases: secondary data

The institutional database and the university’s website were consulted for information on the position, professional category, and academic merits (patents, scientific production, projects and other outcomes) of all the members of the research centre.

In-depth interviews: primary data

Twelve in-depth interviews (30–60 min long) were conducted with women and men in permanent and non-permanent positions at the centre (12 in total). The interviewees were selected based on a strategic selection of participants to ensure representativeness and to provide diverse and information-rich perspectives on the research topic. The distribution of interviewees corresponds to the structure of the energy engineering field itself, a highly masculine area as seen above.

The aim of the interviews was to obtain information on the perceptions, opinions, and experiences of the centre’s staff as regards gender issues from a representative number of individuals of differing professional categories and genders. Following the logic of the dimensions of the indicators, the interview guide was structured into these four blocks (see “ Qualitative information ” section). The information extracted was transcribed and analysed according to the qualitative content method [ 42 ]. The N-VIVO software was used as a tool to support the analysis.

We have divided the analysis of the results into two parts. In the first part, we show the results obtained for the indicators. These results are generic, i.e. they could be useful for monitoring the gender gap in any research centre in the Spanish research system.

Secondly, we present the results of the weighting of the context-based indicators and the monitoring of an energy technology research centre. The results have been obtained by measuring the performance of a particular centre for each of the proposed indicators.

Indicators to monitor the gender gap in research centres in Spain

Model description (energy research gender indicators).

Once the preliminary list of indicators was obtained (see “ Selection of indicators and relevant aspects ” section), and based on the context of the research centres, the main indicators were selected for the purposes of monitoring these centres. The final list of indicators, which was drawn up through a second participatory session of scientists with expertise in gender and energy, is shown in Table 3 . These selected indicators will be the DANP elements of the network.

This second expert prioritization phase took place during a comprehensive face-to-face session. The experts were convened for a half-day session. The initial session started with the validation of the indicators, which were thoroughly examined and deliberated over to ensure unanimous agreement on the list. Once the indicators were validated, the facilitators (some authors of this paper) elucidated the DANP principles, enhancing the experts’ comprehension and facilitating the clarity of the subsequent surveys. After that, each expert addressed his/her surveys individually under the guidance of facilitators. The results of each survey were immediately processed and presented to each of the experts for review. Subsequently, the facilitators aggregated all the individual results using the geometric mean, the consensus judgement according to [ 41 ], so as to obtain the group responses.

The criteria are clustered into four categories as shown in Fig. 2 : research management and results, staff configuration and structure, work culture, and gender contents in research.

Overview of the proposed model

Results obtained for the weights and interactions of the indicators

The context-based indicators already defined must be weighted, obtaining the Energy Research Gender Indicators (ERGIs). For this, we use the DEMATEL technique.

The expanded panel of experts (see Table 2 ) will then be asked individually to elicit their judgements. To this end, we designed a questionnaire in which they will be asked to rate the intensity of the influence between each pair of criteria from 0 to 4, in which 0 is no influence and 4 is maximum influence. An example of this questionnaire is shown in Fig. 3 .

Questionnaire used to weight the influence of context-based indicators

The DANP method prioritizes the selected indicators from the most to the least important for the evaluation of gender issues in the ERC, according to the participating experts.

The final prioritization of indicators for the aggregated group of experts obtained with the DANP technique is shown in Table 4 and Fig. 4 .

Prioritization of the indicators

In Fig. 4 , three indicators stand out slightly from the rest. The first is C24: Gender diversity in organizational leadership positions; the second C34: Existence of an equality plan, and the third C11: Gender diversity in research leadership. Two of them are related to the leadership of women.

This graph also shows that indicators related to the organization’s own structure, staff configuration and work culture, are more important than indicators related to research outputs when measuring the gender gap in the institution. The use of the DEMATEL technique also allows us to obtain very detailed and relevant information regarding the influences exerted by the indicators on each other. In Table 5 , we present the matrix of influences obtained by the set of experts. In this matrix, each cell represents the influence that the indicator in the row exerts on the indicator in the column.

The total relationship matrix presented in Table 5 shows the results in three different levels according to the two obtained thresholds for relevance [ 21 ]:

Threshold 1. Moderate influence: mean + 1 standard deviation (0.209)

Threshold 2. High influence: mean + 2 standard deviation (0.292)

Grey values are below threshold 1, black values are above threshold 1, and bold values are above threshold 2.

In addition, in the matrix we present the results of the calculations of factors D and R for each indicator (see Eqs. 1 – 5 ). Recall that factor D indicates the level of influence exerted by an indicator and factor R represents the level of influence that the indicator receives. In this second level of analysis, we can see that the indicators with the greatest influence are C34 and C24, which coincide with the two indicators that Fig. 3 shows as being the most important. We also observe that the two most influential indicators are C34 and C11. In other words, the indicators that stand out for their influence on the network coincide with the most important.

We would like to represent this information in a cause-effect diagram; in Fig. 5 we present the X -axis, which shows the degree of importance of each indicator ( R + R ) and the Y -axis, which shows the degree of cause (positive values) or effect (negative values) of each indicator ( D – R ).

Cause–effect diagram of the ERGIs

As can be seen in this diagram, the indicators are classified into four quadrants [ 43 ]. We may observe that the indicators that appear in quadrant II are: C24, gender diversity in organizational leadership positions and C31, ease-of-use of work–life balance measures. These can be considered key factors and should be taken into account when designing gender actions. Indicator C31 has not appeared until now as it belongs neither to the most influential nor to the most important group. However, the combination of both properties places it in quadrant II, which makes it a relevant factor when measuring the gender gap in research centres. Our interpretation of these two key factors is that the role of senior researchers is crucial because the fact that there are women in the relevant positions serves as a mirror in which they look for the other women working in the same research centre. In addition, the dynamics can be different when there are women in leadership since it makes clear to the staff in their charge what position they might occupy in the hierarchy of the organization. This result aligned with those from previous studies [ 30 ]. In our case study, the effect of the low number of women and the fact that part of the staff is not accustomed to mixed-gendered interactions have been clearly stated during the interviews. We find that women with a clear vision of equality problems in the centre have probably created a safe environment, bearing in mind that the younger women under their command have not perceived the problems they had faced. However, that affects only a few of the research groups of the centre, groups in which there is a high concentration of female members by the way.

On the other hand, the availability and ease of use of work–life balance measures are considered highly relevant factors that could make the difference when attempting to attract more women to a field as masculine as energy engineering.

Additional conclusions that can be drawn from Fig. 5 are as follows:

These indicators are isolated: C12, mobility actions carried out ; C33, existence of regulations on conduct in cases of workplace harassment and C14, participation of women in knowledge transfer . This means that they are less influential on others. For instance, according to the national authorities, mobility or knowledge transfer are relevant requirements for career advancement but have limited impact on other gender aspects, as is the case of sexual harassment regulations, which are highly relevant but not so closely related to others.

C41, gender contents in research appears to be of low influence and not of great importance. Not all research leaves room for gender perspective integration as is the case of some research in the field of energy.

Finally, we would like to re-emphasize those indicators that appear to be very influential but not very important: C23, transparency in selection processes ; C35, specific training in gender issues . These would be indicators that have a strong influence on others, but which would not be so important on their own, i.e. without considering their relationships with the rest. It is necessary to consider them whenever their influence is exerted on important indicators. For instance, transparency in selection processes affects the distribution of staff both vertically and horizontally, whereas the fact that staff are trained in gender issues will make them more aware of these issues and more critical of inequalities.

Results of the monitoring of a research centre in energy engineering

Qualitative information.

The three thematic blocks of the information obtained from the personal interviews correspond to the dimensions developed in the Energy Research Gender Indicators (ERGIs): (1) research management and results; (2) staff configuration and structure; (3) working culture; and (4) gender contents in research.

Firstly, as regards research management, a large proportion of the men interviewed stated that the organization, participation, and leadership of research in the centre only respond to meritocratic and hierarchical issues and that gender has no influence whatsoever. A researcher stated “the truth is that we were surprised by your interview because here we do not… here what matters is what matters. (…) women, men, and everything. And the truth is that I believe that no discrimination has ever been made” (I1). However, the women interviewed expressed a more critical attitude towards the management of gender diversity in the centre.

Secondly, the unequal proportion of men and women in the organization is one of the issues most frequently mentioned. It is stated that this is a structural problem of the discipline, which manifests itself as early as undergraduate studies, on which very few women are enrolled, and which is reproduced on the subsequent levels of the scientific career and, therefore, at the centre. Furthermore, they state that in comparison, “there are many women at the entry level, but very few go all the way [to a research career]” (I3). There are no proactive measures to try to reverse the structural inequality in the centre by taking positive discrimination measures in selection processes or by making specific calls to attract more women. The permanent researchers interviewed claim to select members of their group based on their knowledge and specialization, regardless of gender. Furthermore, as will be seen in the quantitative results (“ Quantitative information ” section), there is a clear gender gap in positions of responsibility, both vertically and horizontally.

Thirdly, as regards the work culture, working hours are flexible, which is seen as positive for both the family and private life of men and women. However, these measures are still insufficient, as one of the interviewees stated: “private life still affects women more in terms of career development (…) motherhood (…) leaves you behind” (I7).

It is also important to highlight the participation dynamics and the atmosphere in the centre. The fact that there is a reduced number of women is influential, insofar as the women feel less involved because they are in a smaller proportion. And “I do have to say that it is still noticeable that men are not used to it. There are very, very few …that will surely affect that men are accustomed to dealing with men” (I7).

Finally, the incorporation of the gender perspective in research, which is seen, in most cases, as something alien to the nature of the work due to its object of study (e.g., fundamental science). In these studies, in which this perspective would have a place, it is considered that “[considering] research questions or the object of our work is more difficult for us because we do not have the skills. What we know how to do, we do not know how it can contribute” (I10).

On the other hand, although most of the interviewees know of the existence of an equality plan and sexual harassment protocols, it is only their existence that is acknowledged, not their content or implications in the centre.

In short, most of the male interviewees’ discourse centred around the fact that there is no gender-related problem at the institution, either in the management of research or in the working environment. However, this is not the case for some of the women interviewed who do allude to different problems of gender discrimination, such as “the distribution of tasks and roles in the centre” (I2).

Quantitative information

Primary data results: survey.

Researchers who indicated they had children (60%) were asked whether they had taken maternity/paternity leave. 100% of the women with children reported taking maternity leave, whereas less than 50% of the men did. This is especially relevant since maternity leave was regarded by some of the researchers as a critical point in the development of a woman’s scientific career, leading to them losing advantage compared to their male counterparts. If men took paternity leave as well, the difference would not be so blatant, and the impact would be smaller.

The large majority of respondents (75%) reported not having received any gender equality training (see Fig. 6 ). The primary source of training for those who did was the university.

Gender equality training received

Secondary data results: website of the centre and official university database

The research outcomes of all ERC staff were thoroughly reviewed and analysed. This examination included several variables, such as the quantity of published papers, papers published as first authors, research projects as PI, contracts obtained, number of contracts in which they participate, and patents. The analysis was focused on the data from 2019–2023, which were later on segregated by gender. The aim was to identify key factors contributing to scientific career advancement.

Table 6 shows the members of the monitored centre classified according to professional categories following the Spanish university system. Notably, there are no women in the highest category.

Figures 7 and 8 compare gender distribution in research contracts between private companies and publicly funded R&D projects. A notable difference emerges in leadership roles: senior men predominantly lead contracts with private companies, while senior women tend to lead publicly funded R&D projects. As regards the higher number of women leading public projects (Fig. 7 ), there could be several reasons for this, such as: (i) networking, (ii) the policy of promoting gender equality and (iii) the differences between the motivations and values of men and women in terms of the impact of their results.

Principal investigators of publicly funded R&D projects attending to professional tenure and gender

Principal investigators of private contracts attending to professional tenure and gender

Private contracts lack regulations for PIs, whereas for publicly funded projects, there is a policy promoting gender equality in science that positively evaluates projects led by women. On the other hand, and as far as the higher number of men leading private contracts is concerned (Fig. 8 ), that could be a question of ease-of-access to advertising venues since, as the information is not open, are obtained through contacts. Again, the dynamics of a male-connected engineering environment may be observed.

Monitoring of the Research Centre: gathering of data indicators

The results obtained for ERGIs in the monitoring of a Spanish Energy Research Centre as well as the sources from which these results have been collected are shown in Table 7 .

As regards the results of the DANP model and the ERGI values obtained for the ERC, we propose some recommendations focusing on key factors that should be considered when designing gender actions in this centre. These key factors will be those indicators that are important or influential, (or those that combine both properties), and whose ERGI values are low or qualitatively deficient for the centre. We propose recommendations for those indicators marked with * in Table 7 .

For recommendation purposes, from the total list of 14 indicators we choose those that add up to 50% of the total weight. This prioritization allows us to focus on the most important factors that are likely to have the greatest impact on the outcome and prevents the inclusion of too many recommendations that could lead to excessive complexity and potentially obscure the improvement of the process. Therefore, we will more thoroughly analyse the indicators that add up to 50% of the weighting process according to Fig. 1 : C24, C34, C11, C21, and C35.

Case study: key indicators and recommendations

As far as the results of the DANP model and the ERGI values obtained for the analysed ERC are concerned, we propose recommendations in the following indicators (marked in Table 7 with *):

C24. Gender diversity in organizational leadership positions

C34. Awareness of the existence of an equality plan

C11. Gender diversity in research leadership—% Women principal investigators of projects

C21. Vertical segregation

C35. Gender-specific training

C31. Ease-of-use of work–life balance measures

The lack of women in organizational leadership positions is pronounced in the case of the study as no women are present in head positions. This indicator (C24) affects multiple dimensions. The insufficient or, in this case, inexistent female representation in high-level positions might dissuade women from joining an organization in which they do not foresee career development. The presence of women in management might be perceived as making panels more approachable or more receptive to the acknowledgement and tackling of gender issues than those that are exclusively male. Additionally, the absence of women in high positions can potentially disincentivize them from entering an institution where gender dynamics might pose a challenge. These arguments also apply to indicators C21: Vertical segregation and C11: Gender diversity in research leadership . In the case of indicator C11, it is worth highlighting that being the principal investigator of projects is a requirement for any advancement in academic research in the energy sector in Spain. The low proportion of female principal investigators in projects could explain the absence of women in leadership positions. The difficulty they experience in advancing their scientific careers, and consequently accessing management positions, may be a contributing factor.

There is a prevailing belief within the research centre that only meritocracy drives success, dismissing other factors—especially gender—as irrelevant. Despite the evidence, including the low representation of female leaders in the scientific output of the Spanish energy sector [ 17 ], many members fail to recognize existing differences or inequalities. Consequently, these indicators could serve as a pivotal tool to raise awareness and challenge expected resistance towards equality measures within specific groups.

Specific training on gender (C35) would address two different aspects identified in this case study. Firstly, it would provide training to those people who recognize that there is a gender gap and are willing to work towards reducing it but do not have the tools or knowledge to address it, either as a power figure or as part of the group. And secondly, it would increase the awareness of those who consider that no gender gap exists, nor that changes should be made to accommodate a more inclusive view. Thus, given its importance, gender training should not be the sole responsibility of the University's Equality Committee, but the research centre should also oversee the proposal and development of activities that promote training in equality to make this as cross-cutting and diverse as possible.

Furthermore, there is a significant lack of awareness regarding the content of the equality plan (C34). The actions taken to circulate this content and make it visible to the staff should be promoted by the management. However, this would require an initial acknowledgment of the gender gap by the heads of the institution.

The availability of work–life balance measures (C31) is identified as a crucial indicator for the career development of women in research. Yet, availability is not enough. The acceptance of such measures by the work environment as well as whether men make use of them are important factors that weigh in women’s career development. If men in the institution are making equal use of the measures, women’s careers will be less negatively impacted from a competitive point of view when they use them. Besides, it is also a sign that the organizational culture is more sensitive, and that care is not considered a women-only issue.

Furthermore, the ease with which women can make use of the work–life balance measures is considered a highly relevant factor, which leads us to believe that centres not placing obstacles in their way—considering the reasons why they use them—would be an attractive factor for women. Particularly in a field as masculine as energy engineering.

While work–life balance measures are present they are often informal, and the absence of official guidelines gives line managers the discretion to determine the extent, duration, and timing of these measures. Therefore, a change of manager might entail a change of conditions or some uncertainty towards what their rights will be, as some men pointed out in the interviews.

The Gender Perspective in Research Content (C41) was not identified as a relevant indicator, possibly due to the nature of the research. Indeed, for some of the research conducted, gender perspective cannot be applied; for example, in the study of the disposition of photovoltaic cells. However, it was detected that this possibility had often not been considered. Therefore, future research should assess whether its impact may be different for women and whether it is possible to integrate a gender perspective into both the samples and data collection. Several studies have shown that men and women may have different energy consumption patterns due to varying daily routines, responsibilities, and access to resources [ 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ]. Taking gender differences into consideration can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the energy needs and these consumption patterns. This is particularly relevant, since women are the primary users of household energy in both developing and industrialized countries [ 8 ]. It could also contribute to the fostering of a broader and fairer approach in policy and technology development; for instance, adapting renewable energy projects to address specific needs of women in rural areas [ 18 , 48 ], or simply having enough understanding not to create inequalities or perpetuate those already existing.

Finally, a recommendation is addressed to the home institution of the research centre. The centre has no expertise in gender equality, while the equality plans are located at university level. We have identified that some gendered distortions that exist throughout the whole Spanish research system- such as gendered precariousness and the impact of family responsibilities- are not mitigated by centre measures and university measures are equally absent and unrecognized. Considering the effort to be made, the research centre cannot do it alone; for its development, it should have the support of the equality unit of the institution to which it belongs. The centre could greatly benefit from developing a tailored equality plan that considers its unique circumstances as regards the gender gap. While rooted in the general measures of the institution's plan, the centre’s plan should incorporate specific aspects that reflect its nuances. This entails integrating measures specifically designed to address and bridge the gender gap within the research centre.

General discussion

To effectively study and enhance the presence and participation of women in the field of energy science, comprehensive data are imperative. Disaggregated data, at least separated into area of knowledge, category, and gender, is vital for both informed decision-making and understanding the reality within research centres, enabling the necessary steps to be taken.

The case study research method carried out aims to provide insights into the workings of a particular process within its context, enabling us to observe the dynamics of the agents and infer explanations. However, it is important to note that this approach is not representative and can only be compared once more cases have been developed [ 49 ]. Expanding the research to monitor additional energy research centres would enhance the model and offer deeper insights into the unique dynamics and challenges within this domain. While each centre may present distinct dynamics, this adaptable model is designed to accommodate and integrate these differences. Therefore, this tool can serve both diagnostic and awareness-raising purposes—a conversation starter rooted in data, demonstrating the persistent existence of the gender gap demanding attention and resolution. The presented indicators possess the potential to serve as diagnostic tools for understanding the gender gap within research institutions and for raising awareness. This is particularly crucial in fields such as energy, where according to the cited literature, the gender gap is often overlooked, as we found out in our case study.

We are currently monitoring other research centres using the same general methodology and replicating the specific methodological part of the case study in two additional scientific sectors: applied technologies and biology sciences. The findings in these two case studies reveal similar dynamics in the underrepresentation of women, especially in leadership roles in research and management positions. What may also be observed is how little aware these organizations are of the existing gender gap.

The development of an indicator tool based on DANP not only serves as a proactive approach to the monitoring and evaluation of gender roles and inequalities in research centres but also contributes to interpreting results and forming recommendations. Applied in a case study, this tool is specifically tailored to incorporate findings from literature reviews and both qualitative and quantitative organizational inputs, considering the broader energy, science, and gender context in Spain.

The tool’s design considers the complexity of measuring relational dynamics within organizations, recognizing that these dynamics significantly contribute to the gender gap. This perspective helps integrate various dimensions, including the individuals involved, relational dynamics, and organizational culture. The gender gap is portrayed as a multi-dimensional problem, extending beyond mere numerical representation. Using a multi-criteria decision-making method, we assess the impact of the indicators on gender equality in order to address the gender gap in a specific research centre. This method entails the selection and grouping of decision criteria, followed by the analysis of interactions within the network model defined, considering the opinion of energy stakeholders, not only gender experts.

Our context-sensitive methodology reveals specific dynamics. For instance, in the analysed centre, a sexist environment emerges through informal comments, such as jokes; men often underuse available life–work balance measures, and there is a gendered pattern in fund access: women primarily lead publicly funded projects, limiting their diversification due to a more limited access to private funds.

The use of indicators serves as powerful diagnostic tool and catalyst for awareness. They highlight the persistent gender gap, particularly in traditionally male-dominated fields, such as energy engineering, where this gap often goes unrecognized and acts as a catalyst for conversations about the changes required.

It is advisable to expand the research so as to monitor more centres for the purposes of refining the model and better understanding the nuances of the gender gap. An ongoing monitoring would help to identify existing disparities and instigate actions toward gender equality. For this reason, the research would benefit from the monitoring of more energy research centres to further adapt the model and better understand the particularities that this area might include. Our findings, from an in-depth case study, can be discussed in the development of further research avenues on gender and energy. However, each organization is unique and the methodology we propose is designed to fit the specific dynamics of each centre.

Limitations and future research lines

We acknowledge and emphasize the intrinsic limitation of our in-depth case study methodology and encourage further research that can provide additional insights and patterns into the gender dynamics in energy research centres. Our purpose is to follow up with other energy engineering institutes in Spain, as well as to establish comparisons with other geographical contexts, such as with similar studies conducted in Germany [ 50 ]. This could provide a broader view and strengthen the applicability of the proposed tool in various contexts. We are currently monitoring several research institutes in differing areas of knowledge, also in Spain, with results that are very similar to those presented in this analysis. We intend to continue this study by applying the proposed methodology and carrying out a comparative study of these institutions.

Moreover, we also want to highlight some other limitations regarding data gathering. We were unable to employ any strategies to mitigate non-response bias in the collection of primary data, such as follow-up contacts or incentives for participation due to confidentiality reasons of the monitored centre. This could have compromised the representativeness of the quantitative results through the survey.

Finally, as regards the interpretation of some of the qualitative results, we know that there is an interpretation bias in the results on paternity leave due to the fact that the length of this leave in Spain has varied greatly over the last 20 years from 4 days to 6 months. Since age was not asked in order to anonymize the responses to the questionnaire, it is not possible to relate the length of leave to whether it was taken or not. Further research could have an impact on this issue, since no data has been available until recently.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to the need to protect the privacy of study participants but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Energy Research Centre

Analytic Network Process

Combination of DEMATEL and ANP (DANP)

Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory

Energy Research Gender Indicators (ERGIs)

European Union

Multi-criteria decision methods

Gayoso Heredia M, Sánchez-Guevara Sánchez C, Núñez Peiró M, Sanz Fernández A, López-Bueno JA, Muñoz Gómez G (2022) Mainstreaming a gender perspective into the study of energy poverty in the city of Madrid. Energy Sustain Dev 70:290–300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2022.08.007

Article Google Scholar

Hanke F, Guyet R (2023) The struggle of energy communities to enhance energy justice: insights from 113 German cases. Energy Sustain Soc 13:1–16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13705-023-00388-2

Feenstra M, Özerol G (2021) Energy justice as a search light for gender-energy nexus: Towards a conceptual framework. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 138:1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2020.110668

Farhar BC, Osnes B, Lowry EA (2014) Energy and gender. In: Press OU (ed) Energy poverty: global challenges and local solutions. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 152–179

Chapter Google Scholar

Shailaja R (2000) Women, energy and sustainable development. Energy Sustain Dev 4:45–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0973-0826(08)60231-8

Oparaocha S, Dutta S (2011) Gender and energy for sustainable development. Curr Opin Environ Sustain 3:265–271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2011.07.003

Standal K, Talevi M, Westskog H (2020) Engaging men and women in energy production in Norway and the United Kingdom: the significance of social practices and gender relations. Energy Res Soc Sci 60:101338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2019.101338

Cecelski E (2000) The role of women in sustainable energy development. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden

Book Google Scholar

Imbulana Arachchi J, Managi S (2021) Preferences for energy sustainability: different effects of gender on knowledge and importance. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 141:110767. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2021.110767

Cannon CEB, Chu EK (2021) Gender, sexuality, and feminist critiques in energy research: a review and call for transversal thinking. Energy Res Soc Sci 75:102005. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102005

Lazoroska D, Palm J, Bergek A (2021) Perceptions of participation and the role of gender for the engagement in solar energy communities in Sweden. Energy Sustain Soc 11:1–12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13705-021-00312-6

Fraune C (2015) Gender matters: Women, renewable energy, and citizen participation in Germany. Energy Res Soc Sci 7:55–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.02.005

Sovacool BK (2014) What are we doing here? Analyzing fifteen years of energy scholarship and proposing a social science research agenda. Energy Res Soc Sci 1:1–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2014.02.003

Innovación M de C e (2023) Científicas En Cifras. Estadísticas e indicadores la (des)igualdad género en la Form. y profesión científica. In: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. https://www.ciencia.gob.es/InfoGeneralPortal/documento/f4f6bb28-cae5-4da2-85f4-067508c410eb . Accessed 21 Mar 2024

Estadística IIN de (2023) Estadística de Personal de las Universidades. Curso 2021–2022. In: Ministerio de Universidades. Gobierno de España. https://www.universidades.gob.es/estadisticas-de-personal-de-las-universidades/ . Accessed 22 Mar 2024

del Carmen Mayoral Gastón M, Sala AML, Zafra R, González TS, Garcés E, Pozo-Bayón MÁ, Campillo NE, Orozco AO, Faraldos M, González-Sampériz P, Criado-Boado F, Iglesias TV-S, Ruiz MC, de Mujeres y Ciencia del CSIC C (2023) Informe Mujeres Investigadoras 2023. In: Digital CSIC https://digital.csic.es/handle/10261/312328 . Accessed 21 Mar 2024

Estudios D De, Fundación D, Fecyt T (2023) Energías renovables: Inquietudes sociales y nuevos desarrollos científico-tecnológicos. In: Informe Tendecncias Fecyt https://www.fecyt.es/es/publicacion/informe-tendencias-energias-renovables-inquietudes-sociales-y-nuevos-desarrollos . Accessed 21 Mar 2024

Ryan SE (2014) Rethinking gender and identity in energy studies. Energy Res Soc Sci 1:96–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2014.02.008

Carlsson-Kanyama A, Ripa Juliá I, Röhr U (2010) Unequal representation of women and men in energy company boards and management groups: are there implications for mitigation? Energy Policy 38:4737–4740. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2010.03.072

Baruah B (2017) Renewable inequity? Women’s employment in clean energy in industrialized, emerging and developing economies. Natural resources forum. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, pp 18–29

Google Scholar

Mort H (2019) A review of energy and gender research in the global north. Technical University of Vienna, Vienna

Otero-Hermida P, García-Melón M (2018) Gender equality indicators for research and innovation from a responsible perspective: the case of Spain. Sustain 10:2980. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10092980

Otero-Hermida P (2020) For responsible and transformative innovation : putting people at the centre. exploring windows for change in a state initiative on gender and innovation monitoring within the European merge of governance frames. In: Velez-Cuartas, Romero-Goyeneche U of A (ed) Transformative metrics. Fondo Editorial FCSH, Antioquia, pp 106–124

Mergaert L, EL, (2014) Resistance to implementing gender mainstreaming in. Eur Integr online Pap 18:1–21. https://doi.org/10.1695/2014005

Adamson M, Kelan EK, Lewis P, Rumens N, Slíwa M (2016) The quality of equality: thinking differently about gender inclusion in organizations. Hum Resour Manag Int Dig 24:8–11. https://doi.org/10.1108/HRMID-04-2016-0060

Nielsen MW (2016) Limits to meritocracy? Gender in academic recruitment and promotion processes. Sci Public Policy 43:386–399. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scv052

Benschop Y (2011) Gender practices in the construction of academic excellence: sheep with five legs. Organization 10:507–524. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508411414293

European Commission (2015) Indicators for promoting and monitoring Responsible Research and Innovation Report from the Expert Group on Policy Indicators. In: Eur. Comm. https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/306a7ab4-f3cb-46cb-b675-9697caf5df19/language-en . Accessed 21 Mar 2024

Leydesdorff L, Wouters P, Bornmann L (2016) Professional and citizen bibliometrics: complementarities and ambivalences in the development and use. Scientometrics 109:2129–2150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2150-8

Corona-Sobrino C, García-Melón M, Poveda-Bautista R, González-Urango H (2020) Closing the gender gap at academic conferences: a tool for monitoring and assessing academic events. PLoS ONE 15:1–23. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243549

West C, Zimmerman DH (1987) Doing gender. Gend Soc 1:125–151

Suganthi L (2020) Sustainability indices for energy utilization using a multi-criteria decision model. Energy Sustain Soc 10:1–31. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13705-020-00249-2

Belton V, Stewart T (2002) Multiple criteria decision analysis: an integrated approach. Springer Science & Business Media, Kluwer Academic Publisher, Boston

Saaty TL (2001) The analytic network process: decision making with dependence and feedback. RWS Publications, Pittsburgh

Gabus A, Fontela EJBGRC (1972) World problems, an invitation to further thought within the framework of DEMATEL. Battelle Geneva Res Cent 1:12–14

Wu WW (2008) Choosing knowledge management strategies by using a combined ANP and DEMATEL approach. Expert Syst Appl 35:828–835. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2007.07.025

Kadoić N, Divjak B, Begičević Ređep N (2019) Integrating the DEMATEL with the analytic network process for effective decision-making. Cent Eur J Oper Res 27:653–678. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10100-018-0601-4

Article MathSciNet Google Scholar

Jefatura de Estado del Gobierno de España (2023) Ley Orgánica 2/2023, de 22 de marzo, del Sistema Universitario. In: Boletín Oficial del Estado 1–73. https://www.boe.es/eli/es/lo/2023/03/22/2/con . Accessed 21 Mar 2024

Schmidt-Scheele R, Hauser W, Scheel O, Minn F, Becker L, Buchgeister J, Hottenroth H, Junne T, Lehr U, Naegler T, Simon S, Sutardhio C, Tietze I, Ulrich P, Viere T, Weidlich A (2022) Sustainability assessments of energy scenarios: citizens’ preferences for and assessments of sustainability indicators. Energy Sustain Soc 12:1–23. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13705-022-00366-0

Xu X, Goswami S, Gulledge J, Wullschleger SD, Thornton PE (2016) Interdisciplinary research in climate and energy sciences. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Energy Environ 5:49–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/wene.180

Saaty TL, Peniwati K (2013) Group decision making: drawing out and reconciling differences. RWS publications, Pittsburgh

Hsieh HF, Shannon SE (2005) Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qual Health Res 15:1277–1288. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732305276687

Li Y, Zhao K, Zhang F (2023) Identification of key influencing factors to Chinese coal power enterprises transition in the context of carbon neutrality: a modified fuzzy DEMATEL approach. Energy 263:125427. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2022.125427

Clancy J, Roehr U (2003) Gender and energy: is there a Northern perspective? Energy Sustain Dev 7:44–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0973-0826(08)60364-6

Lutzenhiser L (1992) A cultural model of household energy consumption. Energy 17:47–60

Shrestha B, Tiwari SR, Bajracharya SB, Keitsch MM, Rijal HB (2021) Review on the importance of gender perspective in household energy-saving behavior and energy transition for sustainability. Energies 14:7571. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14227571

Raaij V, Raaij WF Van (1984) Patterns of residential energy behavior. In: P. Ester (Ed.), Consumer behavior and energy policy: Selected/ed. proceedings of the 1st international conference, Noordwijkerhout, September, 1982. North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, pp. 97–118

Søraa RA, Anfinsen M, Foulds C, Korsnes M, Lagesen V, Robison R, Ryghaug M (2020) Diversifying diversity: Inclusive engagement, intersectionality, and gender identity in a European Social Sciences and Humanities Energy research project. Energy Res Soc Sci 62:101380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2019.101380

Sayer RA (1992) Method in social science: A realist approach. Psychology Press, Routledge, New York

Thronicker, I., Poppen, J., Tartaroti, V., Heller, K., Schmidtchen J (2023) Diversity Monitoring - Key Indicator Report 2021. In: Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung - UFZ, Interner Bericht. https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=46546 . Accessed 20 Feb 2024

Download references

Acknowledgements

This is an extended and updated version of a paper originally presented at the 18th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES 2022) held in Paphos, Cyprus, over the period 24th to 29th September 2023 (denoted then as paper SDEWES2023.00425 Proposal of an Energy Research Gender Indicator as a diagnostic tool for energy research organizations). Thanks to everyone who contributed to the study by commenting on, filling out and sharing the questionnaire and being interviewed. We would also like to thank the panel of experts in the surveys for their willingness to participate. Finally, we would like to thank Michael Colin Bennett for assisting us with the English revision of the final version of this paper.

Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This work was supported by project INVISIBLES funded by the regional public administration of Valencia under the grant (AICO/2021/133).

This work was also partly supported by the Ministry of Universities through the EU-funded Margarita Salas programme NextGeneration EU, Valencia University under the Grant (2021-1099).

This work was also partly supported by European Commission H2020 Scientific Understanding and Provision of an Enhanced and Robust Monitoring system for RRI SUPER_MoRRI (H2020-SWAFS/0467-Grant-agreement nº 824671).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera, s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain

Sara Sánchez-López, Rocío Poveda-Bautista, Paula Otero-Hermida & Mónica García-Melón

Departament Sociologia i Antropologia Social, Universitat de València, Av. dels Tarongers s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain

Carmen Corona-Sobrino

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Sara Sánchez-López: writing—original draft, methodology, visualization, data curation. Rocío Poveda-Bautista: conceptualization, methodology, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing, supervision. Carmen Corona-Sobrino: conceptualization, methodology, software, data curation, visualization, writing—original draft, writing review & editing. Paula Otero-Hermida: conceptualization, writing—review & editing, supervision. Mónica García-Melón: methodology, data-curation, writing—review and editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sara Sánchez-López .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of Universitat Politècnica de València (P17_10_01_20, 10 January 2020). The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. The questionnaire and interviews did not collect personally identifiable data, according to Delegación de Protección de Datos, IRB of Universitat Politècnica de València, and national regulations Law 3/2018, 5th of December, Protection of Personal Data and guarantee of digital rights, article 7, published in BOE núm. 294, 06/12/2018, (Reference: BOE-A-2018–16673). The purpose of the study was explained to all the participants at the beginning of the questionnaire and interviews. The participants were also informed that they have the right to leave the questionnaire or interview at any time whenever they feel uncomfortable or do not want to answer any further questions.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Sánchez-López, S., Poveda-Bautista, R., Corona-Sobrino, C. et al. Tackling gender disparities in energy research: a diagnostic tool for equality in research centres. Energ Sustain Soc 14 , 51 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13705-024-00479-8

Download citation

Received : 13 December 2023

Accepted : 14 July 2024

Published : 23 August 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s13705-024-00479-8

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Energy research
Research centres

Energy, Sustainability and Society

ISSN: 2192-0567

General enquiries: [email protected]

Today's news
Reviews and deals
Climate change
2024 election
Newsletters
Fall allergies
Health news
Mental health
Sexual health
Family health
So mini ways
Unapologetically
Buying guides

Entertainment

How to Watch
My watchlist
Stock market
Biden economy
Personal finance
Stocks: most active
Stocks: gainers
Stocks: losers
Trending tickers
World indices
US Treasury bonds
Top mutual funds
Highest open interest
Highest implied volatility
Currency converter
Basic materials
Communication services
Consumer cyclical
Consumer defensive
Financial services
Industrials
Real estate
Mutual funds
Credit cards
Balance transfer cards
Cash back cards
Rewards cards
Travel cards
Online checking
High-yield savings
Money market
Home equity loan
Personal loans
Student loans
Options pit
Fantasy football
Pro Pick 'Em
College Pick 'Em
Fantasy baseball
Fantasy hockey
Fantasy basketball
Download the app
Daily fantasy
Scores and schedules
GameChannel
World Baseball Classic
Premier League
CONCACAF League
Champions League
Motorsports
Horse racing

New on Yahoo

Privacy Dashboard

Want to fight gender inequality? A review of data from 118 counties shows that development aid works

Gender inequality isn’t just unfair — it’s also a drag on the world economy. Giving women the same economic opportunities as men would add about US$12 trillion to global gross domestic product by 2025, one analysis found. That’s an 11% boost.

The link between women’s empowerment and economic growth is well established. When women are economically empowered, they invest more in their families, creating a cycle of positive outcomes that spans generations . Women’s participation in the workforce leads to greater productivity and brings diverse perspectives that enhance decision-making and drive innovation .

Recognizing these benefits, governments and nongovernmental organizations have increasingly directed aid — funds provided to developing countries to foster economic growth — toward promoting women’s empowerment.

As an economist who studies development , I wanted to know: Does all that money really make a difference? So, in a recent study , my colleagues and I analyzed the impact of gender-related aid on gender inequality using data from 118 countries over a 13-year period, from 2009 to 2022.

What we found was uplifting: Gender-related aid reduced inequality in most countries we studied.

We looked at two types of gender-related aid. The first is funding for projects that tie gender into larger economic goals. Development experts call this “ significant gender-related aid .” There’s also aid funding that narrowly and explicitly targets gender equality. Experts call this “principal gender-related aid.”

We found that the first approach consistently and significantly reduced gender inequality in 115 out of 118 counties we studied. The latter approach had statistically significant effects in 85 countries. It also appeared to be much more effective when paired with the first approach.

Our findings strongly suggest that integrating gender-related aid into broader development efforts is crucial for promoting gender equality. Gender and development are intricately intertwined, a fact often overlooked. Recognizing this connection is crucial for achieving sustainable and inclusive growth.

Women’s empowerment success stories

That might all sound pretty abstract, but our research shows that the world has made progress in real people’s lives over the past decades. Cases from several countries show just how much progress is possible:

Rwanda: Following the 1994 genocide, Rwanda made a concerted effort to rebuild its society with gender equality at its core. Today, women hold 61% of parliamentary seats , the highest percentage in the world . This remarkable achievement is in part a direct result of gender-focused policies and significant investments in women’s political empowerment. Rwanda’s progress illustrates how political will and dedicated gender-related aid can transform a society .

Bangladesh: Despite traditional gender roles, Bangladesh has made significant strides in gender equality , particularly in education and economic participation . Through targeted programs like the Female Secondary School Stipend Program and microfinance initiatives by organizations like the Grameen Bank, Bangladesh has seen substantial improvements in girls’ education and women’s economic empowerment. These initiatives have contributed to a decline in gender disparities and have spurred economic growth.

Ethiopia: In recent decades, Ethiopia has invested heavily in education , particularly for girls. Programs aimed at increasing school enrollment and reducing dropout rates among girls have led to improved literacy rates and better health outcomes. These educational advancements have empowered women economically and socially, reducing gender inequality .

Despite progress made, these achievements aren’t set in stone. Instability can rapidly undo years of progress. Recent policy backsliding in Afghanistan , Brazil and the United States shows the need for vigilance.

Empowering women empowers men, too

Discussions about the importance of reducing gender inequality often revolve around the direct benefits to women and girls. But everyone, including men, stands to win in a more gender-equal society.

First, women’s economic empowerment leads to stronger economies , which benefits everyone. Research shows that gender equality promotes healthier relationships, reduces violence and fosters more cohesive and supportive communities . Similarly, workplaces prioritizing gender equality tend to have better team dynamics, higher employee satisfaction and increased productivity . These are gains for everyone, regardless of gender.

And gender equality has distinct benefits for men. This is because it alleviates the pressures associated with traditional masculinity , which can lead to better mental health. For example, in more gender-equal societies, men report being happier with life and less stressed and depressed .

This shows that the benefits of gender equality aren’t limited to women and girls; they extend to all members of society. Everyone has a stake in helping progress move along.

Research-backed best practices

Governments and aid professionals should follow five steps for success to safeguard the advances made in gender equality and continue progressing:

1. Keep the aid flowing: Continued financial and technical support for gender equality initiatives is vital. Our research suggests policymakers should focus on integrating gender considerations into all development projects.

2. Engage everyone: Involving men and boys in gender equality efforts helps to challenge and change harmful gender norms, fostering a more inclusive society.

3. Tailor strategies: Although aid has an effect across the board, gender equality initiatives must consider each country’s unique sociopolitical and cultural contexts. Tailoring strategies to fit these contexts ensures that interventions are relevant and practical .

4. Strengthen institutions: Effective institutions and governance are crucial for successfully implementing and sustaining gender equality initiatives. Efforts to improve governance and reduce corruption will enhance the impact of aid

5. Promote education: Schools are a powerful tool for promoting gender equality. Investing in educational programs that empower women and girls and raise awareness about gender issues is essential for long-term change .

Gender equality is a cornerstone of a just and prosperous society. The benefits of empowering women extend far beyond the immediate recipients of gender-related aid, fostering economic growth, political stability and social cohesion. Our research shows that efforts to empower women really do pay off — literally and otherwise.

Bedassa Tadesse does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

COMMENTS

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a
Gender equality is a major problem that places women at a disadvantage thereby stymieing economic growth and societal advancement. In the last two decades, extensive research has been conducted on gender related issues, studying both their antecedents and consequences. However, existing literature reviews fail to provide a comprehensive and clear picture of what has been studied so far, which ...
10 questions on gender equality in education
Feminist School. Gender at the Centre Initiative. School-related Gender-based Violence. Transform Education. 1 of 10 (0%) How many girls are out of school around the world? 110 million. 132 million. 156 million.
Research: How Bias Against Women Persists in Female-Dominated Workplaces
Leanne M. Dzubinski. March 02, 2022. bashta/Getty Images. Summary. New research examines gender bias within four industries with more female than male workers — law, higher education, faith ...
Progress toward gender equality in the United States has slowed or
Social scientists have documented a dramatic change in gender inequality in the last half century, sometimes called a "gender revolution." Women's employment increased and became the norm, even for mothers of young children ().Birth control became available to most (2, 3).The proportion of women receiving baccalaureate or doctoral degrees increased dramatically (4, 5).
Frequently asked questions about gender equality
Gender equity is the process of being fair to women and men. To ensure fairness, strategies and measures must often be available to compensate for women's historical and social disadvantages that prevent women and men from otherwise operating on a level playing field. Equity leads to equality. Gender equality requires equal enjoyment by women ...
Gender inequality as a barrier to economic growth: a review of the
The vast majority of theories reviewed argue that gender inequality is a barrier to economic development, particularly over the long run. The focus on long-run supply-side models reflects a recent effort by growth theorists to incorporate two stylized facts of economic development in the last two centuries: (i) a strong positive association between gender equality and income per capita (Fig. 1 ...
PDF Gender Equality and Poverty Are Intrinsically Linked
itly recognize that gender, poverty and (economic) inequality are intrinsically linked. Specifically, the paper addresses two sets of questions: First, how do intra-family resource allocation and distribution patterns both reflect and shape gender inequalities in power and well-being, and what factors—including policy-
Promoting Gender Equality: A Systematic Review of Interventions
The Global Gender Gap Index 2022 benchmarks 146 countries on the evolution of gender-based gaps in economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment (World Economic Forum, 2022).Although the Index measures gender parity (defined in Table 1) rather than substantive equality, it is a useful tool for analysing progression and regression.
What does gender equality look like today?
A new global analysis of progress on gender equality and women's rights shows women and girls remain disproportionately affected by the socioeconomic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, struggling with disproportionately high job and livelihood losses, education disruptions and increased burdens of unpaid care work. Women's health services, poorly funded even before the pandemic, faced ...
Gender Equality & Discrimination
Workplace diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, or DEI, are increasingly becoming part of national political debates. For a majority of employed U.S. adults (56%), focusing on increasing DEI at work is a good thing. But relatively small shares of workers place a lot of importance on diversity at their workplace. featureMar 28, 2023.
Gender and sex inequalities: Implications and resistance
Introduction. Although the world has seen great strides toward gender/sex equality, a wide gap still remains and unfortunately may be widening. The World Economic Forum (WEF, Citation 2017) annually evaluates the world's progress toward gender inequality in economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
70 questions with answers in GENDER EQUALITY
Nov 30, 2015. Answer. My answer is yes, but the larger question is about cultural gender norms. Heteronormative gender norms are deeply policed within every culture throughout the world (for the ...
More Inclusive Gender Questions Added to the General Social Survey
The General Social Survey, or GSS, is one of the most important data sources for researchers studying American society. For the first time ever in its nearly 50-year history, the survey's 2018 data release includes information on respondents' self-identified sex and gender. The new data will allow researchers to measure the size of the transgender and gender non-binary populations and ...
Women's Assessments of Gender Equality
Women's assessments of gender equality do not consistently match global indices of gender inequality. In surveys covering 150 countries, women in societies rated gender-unequal according to global metrics such as education, health, labor-force participation, and political representation did not consistently assess their lives as less in their control or less satisfying than men did.
Economic Inequality by Gender
The gender pay gap (or the gender wage gap) is a metric that tells us the difference in pay (or wages, or income) between women and men. It's a measure of inequality and captures a concept that is broader than the concept of equal pay for equal work. Differences in pay between men and women capture differences along many possible dimensions ...
Global Gender Equality Survey
Global Gender Equality Survey - 13 key findings. The survey findings show that the public is eager for sustained and strengthened political and financial investments to accelerate progress towards gender equality, whether it is through reforming discriminatory laws, mass awareness campaigns, collecting data on girls' and women's experiences ...
Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a
Our paper offers a scoping review of a large portion of the research that has been published over the last 22 years, on gender equality and related issues, with a specific focus on business and economics studies. Combining innovative methods drawn from both network analysis and text mining, we provide a synthesis of 15,465 scientific articles.
Top 10 Gender Research Topics & Writing Ideas
Issues modern feminism faces. Sexual orientation and gender identity. Benefits of investing in girls' education. Patriarchal attitudes and stereotypes in family relationships. Toys and games of girls and boys. Roles of men and women in politics. Compare career opportunities for both sexes in the military.
How Americans view gender equality as 19th
Key takeaways on Americans' views on gender equality a century after U.S. women gained the right to vote. Aug. 18 marks the 100-year anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women in the United States the right to vote. As this milestone approaches, about half of Americans (49%) say granting women the right to vote ...
Gender inequalities in political participation and political engagement
As have others (e.g. Coffé and Boldenzahl, 2010), we also aim to develop on previous research by analysing not only inequalities in institutional forms of participation linked to the workings of the democratic government (Janoski, 1998).While these modes are important, they provide only a limited picture and it has become increasingly essential to analyse inequalities by gender in modes of ...
143 Gender Inequality Essay Topics & Samples
143 Unique Gender Inequality Essay Titles & Examples. Updated: Feb 26th, 2024. 10 min. Here, you will find 85 thought-provoking topics relating to gender, equality, and discrimination. Browse through our list to find inspiration for your paper - and don't forget to read the gender inequality essay samples written by other students.
100 Best Gender Research Topics
100 Gender Research Topics For Academic Papers. Gender research topics are very popular across the world. Students in different academic disciplines are often asked to write papers and essays about these topics. Some of the disciplines that require learners to write about gender topics include: Sociology. Psychology.
Want to fight gender inequality? A review of data from 118 counties
So, in a recent study, my colleagues and I analyzed the impact of gender-related aid on gender inequality using data from 118 countries over a 13-year period, from 2009 to 2022.
A Scientific Perspective on the Patriarchy: The Gender Pay Gap and
New research challenges common assumptions about the gender pay gap and women's career advancement. This article examines economic studies revealing how factors like career choices, work hours, and job preferences contribute to wage disparities between men and women. It explores the "educational-gender-equality paradox" and questions the effectiveness of quotas in addressing workplace ...
Why Asking Women To Lean In Undermines Gender Equality Efforts
However, a new research study, which includes a survey of over 1100 women, finds that "lean in" messaging reduces women's motivation to protest gender inequality.
Labour, Gender Inequalities and the SDGs: Why Is Decent Work
Most indicators of SDG 8 have retroceded in Brazil, while gender and race inequalities have worsened. In addition, most emergency measures adopted in 2020 remained largely gender-blind and very few addressed women's employment or unpaid care work. Nonetheless, in the middle of this global crisis, women have organised and resisted.
Accelerating progress on gender equality is key for achieving the
In her video message, Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, reiterated the relevance of the Beijing Platform for Action and highlighted the stark reality presented in the 2023 SDG Gender Snapshot report. Despite global efforts, the world is lagging in achieving gender equality. She shared key data points illustrating the slow progress in women's participation in decision-making ...
Do virtual environments close the gender gap in participation in
Consistent with power and status differences between men and women in society, men tend to participate more than women do in question-and-answer (Q&A) sessions at in-person academic conferences. This gap in participation in scientific discourse may perpetuate the status quo. The current research examines whether this gender gap in participation in Q&A sessions extends to virtual conferences ...
Tackling gender disparities in energy research: a diagnostic tool for
In a case study in Spain, the unequal proportion of men and women in a research organization in the energy sector is severe, and long-established dynamics that might determine differences in access to leadership positions and inequalities in research careers are evident. The gender gap in historically masculinized fields, such as energy engineering reflects more than simply the differences in ...
Want to fight gender inequality? A review of data from 118 ...
Gender inequality isn't just unfair — it's also a drag on the world economy. Giving women the same economic opportunities as men would add about US$12 trillion to global gross domestic ...

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Introduction

Data collection

Text processing and keyword extraction

Classification of research topics

Evaluation of semantic importance

Overview of main topics

Compensation.

Decision-making.

Career progression.

Performance.

Organization.

Human capital.

Emerging topics: Leadership and entrepreneurship

Research gaps and conclusions

Supporting information

Acknowledgments

10 QUESTIONS ON GENDER EQUALITY IN EDUCATION

Research: How Bias Against Women Persists in Female-Dominated Workplaces

Partner Center

Frequently asked questions about gender equality

What is meant by gender?

What is the difference between gender equity, gender equality and women’s empowerment?

Why is it important to take gender concerns into account in programme design and implementation?

What is gender mainstreaming?

Why is gender equality important?

Is gender equality a concern for men?

More Inclusive Gender Questions Added to the General Social Survey

Recent Articles

New book from Alison Dahl Crossley

Artist’s Salon: Hannah Zeavin on how transference, boundary violations, and feminism have shaped psychoanalysis

The attacks on DEI: white anxieties, moral panics, and material impacts

Economic Inequality by Gender

Related topics

Women's Employment

Women’s Rights

Maternal Mortality

How does the gender pay gap look like across countries and over time?

The gender pay gap measures inequality but not necessarily discrimination

In most countries, there is a substantial gender pay gap

In most countries, the gender pay gap has decreased in the last couple of decades

The gender pay gap is larger for older workers

The gender pay gap is smaller in middle-income countries – which tend to be countries with low labor force participation of women

Why is there a gender pay gap?

Differences in human capital

Education and experience have become much less important in explaining gender differences in wages in the US

Gender pay differences around the world are better explained by occupation than by education

Looking beyond worker characteristics

The motherhood penalty

Ability, personality, and social norms

Discrimination and bias

Strategies for reducing the gender pay gap

How well do biological differences explain the gender pay gap?

Some context regarding the gender distribution of labor

“Boys are better at maths”

“It’s about personality”

“A man should earn more than his wife”

Distribution of income share earned by the wife across married couples in the US – Bertrand, Kamenica, and Pan (2015) 33

Why do gender norms and identity matter?

How are women represented across jobs?

Representation of women in management positions

Representation of women in low-paying jobs

How much control do women have over household resources?

Percentage of women not involved in decisions about their own income – World Development Report (2012) 39

In many countries, women have limited influence over important household decisions

Land ownership is more often in the hands of men

Gender-equal inheritance systems have been adopted in most, but not all countries

Gender differences in access to productive inputs are often large

Interactive Charts on Economic Inequality by Gender

Cite this work

Reuse this work freely

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Filippo Chiarello

Paola Rovelli

Associated Data

Introduction

Data collection

Text processing and keyword extraction

Classification of research topics

Evaluation of semantic importance