Gender and trade

Of the many influences on how we view men and women, media are the most pervasive and one of the most powerful. Woven throughout our daily lives, media insinuate their messages into our consciousness at every turn. All forms of media communicate images of the sexes, many of which perpetuate unrealistic, stereotypical, and limiting perceptions. Three themes describe how media represent gender. First, women are underrepresented, which falsely implies that men are the cultural standard and women are unimportant or invisible. Second, men and women are portrayed in stereotypical ways that reflect and sustain socially endorsed views of gender. Third, depictions of relationships between men and women emphasize traditional roles and normalize violence against women. We will consider each of these themes in this section.

Is there an inevitable global violent clash unfolding between the world's largest religions: Islam and Christianity? Do religions cause violent conflicts, or are there other factors at play? How can we make sense of increasing reports of violence between Christian and Muslim ethnic communities across the world? By seeking to answer such questions about the relationship between religion and violence in today's world, Ziya Meral challenges popular theories and offers an alternative explanation, grounded on insights inferred from real cases of ethno-religious violence in Africa and the Middle East. The relationship between religion and violence runs deep and both are intrinsic to the human story. Violence leads to and shapes religion, while religion acts to enable violence as well as providing responses that contain and prevent it. However, with religious violence being one of the most serious challenges facing the modern world, Meral shows that we need to de-globalise our analysis and focus on individual conflicts, instead of attempting to provide single answers to complex questions.

This handbook is a quick-reference tool that provides practical, field-level guidance to establish and maintain a GBV sub-cluster in a humanitarian emergency. It provides the foundations for coordination. More in-depth information can be pursued through resources referenced in this handbook. The GBV AoR website (gbvaor.net) maintains a repository of tools, training materials and resources that complement this handbook. As a second edition, this handbook provides updates to practitioners on humanitarian reforms, lessons learned, promising practices and resources that have emerged since its first publication in 2010

In the 2019 Global Report “Harnessing the power of data for gender equality: Introducing the 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index”, we introduce the 2019 SDG Gender Index. The index is the most comprehensive tool available to explore the state of gender equality across 129 countries (covering 95% of the world’s girls and women), 14 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and 51 targets linked to issues inherent in the SDGs. The 2019 SDG Gender Index finds that, with just 11 years to go until 2030, nearly 40% of the world’s girls and women – 1.4 billion – live in countries failing on gender equality. Another 1.4 billion live in countries that “barely pass”. Even the highest-scoring countries have more to do, particularly on complex issues such as climate change, gender budgeting and public services, equal representation in powerful positions, gender pay gaps, and gender-based violence. No country in the world has reached the “last mile” on gender equality.

This Research and Practice Note provides an overview of key thinking on social norms of relevance to challenging gender inequalities that affect adolescent girls. It defines gender norms as informal rules and shared social expectations that distinguish expected behaviour on the basis of gender. It brings together insights from gender theory and social norms theory to help understand what influences gender norms and how they operate in particular circumstances. It distinguishes gender norms from practices (manifestations of norms) and the values that underlie norms, drawing on fieldwork in Ethiopia, Nepal, Viet Nam and Uganda. It considers the relationship between poverty and discriminatory gender norms, and concludes that while poverty can sharpen gender discrimination, it does not always do so, and that sometimes discriminatory gender norms affect better-off girls mores.