definition essay gender equality

Talk to our experts

1800-120-456-456

• Gender Equality Essay

Introduction to Gender Equality

In a society, everyone has the right to lead his/her life accordingly without any discrimination. When this state is achieved where all individuals are considered to be equal irrespective of their caste, gender, colour, profession, and status, we call it equality. Equality can also be defined as the situation where every individual has the same rights and equal opportunity to grow and prosper. 

Every individual of society dreams for equal rights and access to resources available at their disposal, but there is a lot of discrimination. This discrimination can be due to cultural differences, geographical differences, the colour of the individual, social status and even gender. The most prevalent discrimination is gender inequality. It is not a localised issue and is limited to only certain spheres of life but is prevalent across the globe. Even in progressive societies and top organisations, we can see many examples of gender bias. 

Gender equality can only be achieved when both male and female individuals are treated similarly. But discrimination is a social menace that creates division. We stop being together and stand together to tackle our problems. This social stigma has been creeping into the underbelly of all of society for many centuries. This has also been witnessed in gender-based cases. Gender inequality is the thing of the past as both men and women are creating history in all segments together.

Gender Equality builds a Nation

In this century, women and men enjoy the same privileges. The perception is changing slowly but steadily. People are now becoming more aware of their rights and what they can do in a free society. It has been found that when women and men hold the same position and participate equally, society progresses exclusively and creates a landmark. When a community reaches gender equality, everyone enjoys the same privileges and gets similar scopes in education, health, occupation, and political aspect. Even in the family, when both male and female members are treated in the same way, it is the best place to grow, learn, and add great value.

A nation needs to value every gender equally to progress at the right place. A society attains better development in all aspects when both genders are entitled to similar opportunities. Equal rights in decision making, health, politics, infrastructure, profession, etc will surely advance our society to a new level. The social stigma of women staying inside the house has changed. Nowadays, girls are equally competing with boys in school. They are also creating landmark development in their respective profession. Women are now seeking economic independence before they get married. It gives them the confidence to stand against oppression and make better decisions for themselves.

The age-old social structure dictated that women need to stay inside the home taking care of all when men go out to earn bread and butter. This has been practised for ages when the world outside was not safe. Now that the time has changed and we have successfully made our environment quite safer, women can step forward, get educated, pursue their passion, bring economic balance in their families, and share the weight of a family with men. This, in a cumulative way, will also make a country’s economy progress faster and better.

Methods to measure Gender Equality

Gender equality can be measured and a country’s growth can be traced by using the following methods.

Gender Development Index (GDI) is a gender-based calculation done similar to the Human Development Index. 

Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) is a detailed calculation method of the percentage of female members in decision-making roles. 

Gender Equity Index (GEI) considers economic participation, education, and empowerment.

Global Gender Gap Index assesses the level of gender inequality present on the basis of four criteria: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, health and survival .

According to the Gender Gap Index (GGI), India ranks 140 among 156 participating countries. This denotes that the performance of India has fallen from the previous years, denoting negative growth in terms of closing the gender gap. In the current environment where equality and equal opportunities are considered supreme, this makes India be at a significant disadvantage.

Roadblocks to Gender Equality  

Indian society is still wrecked by such stigmas that dictate that women are meant to manage the home and stay indoors. This is being done for ages, leading to neglect of women in areas like education, health, wealth, and socio-economic fields. 

In addition to that, the dowry system is further crippling society. This ill practice had led to numerous female feticides. It has created a notion that girls are a burden on a family, which is one of the primary reasons a girl child cannot continue her education. Even if they excel in education and become independent, most of them are forced to quit their job as their income is considered a backup source, which is not fair. New-age women are not only independent, but they are confident too. The only thing they demand from society is support, which we should provide them.  

Along with dowry, there is one more burning issue that has a profound impact on women's growth. It is prevalent in all kinds of society and is known as violence. Violence against women is present in one or another form in public and private spaces. Sometimes, violence is accompanied by other burning issues such as exploitation, harassment, and trafficking, making the world unsafe for women. We must take steps to stop this and ensure a safe and healthy place for women.  

Poverty is also one of the major roadblocks towards gender equality. It has led to other malpractices such as child marriage, sale of children, trafficking and child labour, to name a few. Providing equal job opportunities and upliftment of people below the poverty line can help bring some checks onto this.

Initiative Towards Gender Equality

Any kind of discrimination acts as a roadblock in any nation’s growth, and a nation can only prosper when all its citizens have equal rights. Most of the developed countries has comparatively less gender discrimination and provide equal opportunity to both genders. Even the Indian government is taking multiple initiatives to cut down gender discrimination. 

They have initiated a social campaign called “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana” to encourage the education of girl children. Besides this, the government runs multiple other schemes, such as the Women Helpline Scheme, UJJAWALA, National Mission for Empowerment of Women, etc., to generate awareness among the people. Moreover, as responsible citizens, it is our responsibility to spread knowledge on gender discrimination to create a beautiful world for wome n [1] [2] .

FAQs on Gender Equality Essay

1. What Makes Women Unequal to Men?

The social stigmas and beliefs that have been running deeply in the veins of all families make women unequal to men. Women are considered to be a burden by many families and are not provided with the same rights men enjoy in society. We are ill-informed regarding women’s rights and tend to continue age-old practices. This is made worse with social menaces such as the dowry system, child labor, child marriage, etc. Women can gather knowledge, get educated, and compete with men. This is sometimes quite threatening to the false patriarchal society.

2. How can We Promote Gender Equality?

Education is the prime measure to be taken to make society free from such menaces. When we teach our new generation regarding the best social practices and gender equal rights, we can eradicate such menaces aptly. Our society is ill-informed regarding gender equality and rights. Many policies have been designed and implemented by the government. As our country holds the second position in terms of population, it is hard to tackle these gender-based problems. It can only be erased from the deepest point by using education as the prime weapon.

3. Why should Women be Equal to Men?

Women might not be similar to men in terms of physical strength and physiological traits. Both are differently built biologically but they have the same brain and organs to function. Women these days are creating milestones that are changing society. They have traveled to space, running companies, creating history, and making everyone proud. Women are showing their capabilities in every phase and hence, they should be equal to men in all aspects.

4. Mention a few initiatives started by the Indian Government to enable gender equality.

The Indian government has initiated a social campaign called “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana” to encourage girls’ education. Besides this, the government runs multiple other schemes, such as the  Women Helpline Scheme, UJJAWALA, National Mission for Empowerment of Women, etc., to generate awareness among the people.

Gender Equality Essay: How to Inspire Action and Awareness

Writing about the importance of gender equality is crucial in shedding light on the inequalities and disparities that persist between men and women. These essays are like windows into our society, showing us the good and the bad. They're not just for school – they're about real people's lives. When we read and write about gender parity, we're shining a light on issues like discrimination and stereotypes, and we're saying, "Hey, this isn't right!" In this article, we will show you how to write an essay about gender equality to encourage your peers to think about making things more fair for everyone and standing up for what's right, making the world a better place for everyone.

Tips for Writing an Argumentative Essay About Gender Equality

First, let’s answer the question of what is gender equality essay? By definition, it is a written composition that investigates and discusses the concept of gender fairness, aiming to highlight the importance of fair treatment and opportunities for individuals regardless of gender. These essays typically explore historical contexts, societal norms, and contemporary disparities-related challenges, offering insights into how stereotypes, discrimination, and cultural expectations affect people based on gender. Moreover, such assignments seek to raise awareness and foster understanding, prompting readers to critically examine the necessity of creating a society where everyone, regardless of gender, enjoys equal rights, opportunities, and dignity.

At this point, we should write a gender equality essay thesis statement that will serve as the anchor, encapsulating the core argument and purpose of the essay. The thesis is a concise declaration that outlines the writer's stance on the topic and provides a roadmap for the essay's content. An effective thesis statement for a gender parity essay might assert the fundamental principle of equal rights and opportunities for all genders, emphasizing the need to challenge and dismantle societal norms perpetuating discrimination. For instance, a thesis statement could assert that achieving true balance requires dismantling stereotypes, promoting equal access to education and employment, and fostering a cultural shift toward recognizing the inherent value of every individual, irrespective of gender. The thesis statement acts as a guiding beacon, steering the essay in the direction of a comprehensive exploration of the chosen perspective on evenness. Suddenly forgot your task is due tomorrow? Don’t strain yourself, and use our argumentative essay service to achieve the best outcome fast.

Brainstorming Gender Equality Essay Topics

When looking for argumentative essay topics about gender equality, you can find inspiration in various places. Keep an eye on the news, social media discussions, and academic research to see what issues are currently being debated. Personal stories from people who've faced gender-related challenges or your own experiences can be powerful starting points. Understand how past events shaped gender dynamics or analyze how it is portrayed in literature and media. For your gender roles essay, you can analyze global perspectives, legal frameworks, and social movements for additional insights. By drawing from these diverse sources, you can brainstorm compelling arguments that not only tackle the complexities of gender equality but also connect with your audience on a personal and societal level. For your inspiration, we’ve prepared some peculiar ideas for gender equality in society essay, so check them out!

• Workplace fairness for men and women.
• Breaking boys and girls stereotypes in children's books.
• The impact of inequality on mental health stigma.
• Challenges faced by women entrepreneurs.
• Addressing gender bias in healthcare.
• The role of men in feminist movements.
• Promoting inclusivity in sports teams.
• Gender-neutral language in education.
• Breaking the glass ceiling in corporate leadership.
• Tackling gender-based violence in schools.

Gender Equality Essay Outline

Choosing a good title for a gender equality essay involves capturing the essay's main ideas and sparking interest. You can include keywords like "equality" or "empowerment" and use phrasing that makes readers think. For the gender equality essay thesis statement, keep it concise and clear. An example could be: "To achieve real fairness, we need to challenge stereotypes, ensure equal opportunities in education and work, and transform our culture to value everyone's contribution. Only through these comprehensive efforts can we create a society where everyone has a fair shot." Before we proceed to the essay’s outline, revise how many paragraphs in an argumentative essay and its length.

Gender Equality Essay Introduction

To kick off your gender equality introduction essay effectively, start with something that grabs your reader's attention, like a quote, a surprising fact, or a relatable scenario. Next, give a quick background on what gender equality means today or historically, keeping it concise. Then, smoothly transition to your thesis statement – the main point you will argue in your essay. For example, you might say that real parity requires us to challenge stereotypes, make sure everyone has equal chances in education and work, and change our culture to value everyone's contributions. This approach helps your reader understand why the topic is important and what your essay is all about.

For the main body of a future gender equality essay, think about what could be coming up. Consider how new technology, like artificial intelligence, might affect how we see male and female roles. Talk about whether it might help break stereotypes or create new challenges. Give real examples or discuss policies that encourage women to take on roles in fields like technology.

Then, look into how work is changing and what that means for equality. Explore the idea of remote work, flexible schedules, and gig jobs and how they might create more equal opportunities. Discuss how companies or governments are making policies to support work-life balance and equal chances for leadership roles. Use examples to show where these progressive work practices are already happening and how they could impact equivalence in the future. Keep it real and forward-thinking, looking at the positives and potential challenges.

Gender Equality Essay Conclusion

To wrap up your essay, start by briefly restating your main point or thesis. Summarize the key ideas discussed in the essay's body, highlighting their importance in the context of gender equality. Don't bring in new information; instead, emphasize the connections between your arguments and the main point. Finish your gender equality conclusion essay on a strong note by inspiring your reader to consider the broader implications and take action toward achieving genuine parity in society. Keep it clear, concise, and impactful, leaving a lasting impression on your audience.

Essay Revision

To edit and proofread your gender equality essay introduction body and conclusion, start by reviewing the introduction to ensure clarity and conciseness. Verify that your thesis statement is strong and effectively communicates the main argument. Check the hook for its impact on grabbing the reader's attention. Moving to the body, focus on the logical flow of ideas between paragraphs. Confirm that each paragraph has a clear topic sentence, supporting evidence, and a smooth transition to the next. Pay attention to the coherence of your arguments and ensure they align with the overall thesis. Lastly, in the conclusion, restate the thesis, summarize key points, and end with a compelling call to action. Throughout the essay, check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors with the help of our paper writer , ensuring a polished and error-free final draft.

Gender Equality Essay Example

Please review our example of argumentative essay about gender equality to get inspired to produce your own brilliant essay. Remember that these two gender equality essay examples are not for submission because this will be considered plagarism. If you want equally engaging and insightful work, please say, ‘ write my essay ,’ so our experts can procure a new essay for you from scratch to avoid affecting your academic integrity.

Empowering Equality: Breaking Barriers and Building Bridges

Gender equality stands as a fundamental principle for building a just and inclusive society. In recent years, progress has been made, but challenges persist. This essay delves into the multifaceted landscape of fairness, examining the importance of dismantling stereotypes, promoting equal opportunities, and fostering a cultural shift. As we navigate the complexities of the 21st century, the pursuit of genuine equality emerges not only as a moral imperative but also as a critical driver of social and economic progress.

To achieve true equality, the first step involves challenging ingrained stereotypes that limit individuals based on their gender. Stereotypes perpetuate biased expectations, restricting both men and women to predefined roles. For instance, the persistent notion that certain professions are exclusively suited for one gender perpetuates inequality in the workplace. Initiatives promoting diverse role models, debunking myths, and redefining societal norms contribute to dismantling these stereotypes.

Ensuring equal opportunities in education and employment forms the cornerstone of equality. Educational institutions and workplaces must adopt policies that eliminate barriers and provide a level playing field. This involves addressing disparities in STEM education, encouraging girls to pursue careers in traditionally male-dominated fields, and advocating for fair hiring practices. Achieving balance in educational and professional spheres fosters an environment where talent and capability, rather than gender, determine success.

A genuine cultural shift is imperative for achieving lasting equality. Cultural norms often perpetuate inequality, shaping attitudes and behaviors. Encouraging open conversations about gender, challenging discriminatory practices, and promoting inclusivity in all aspects of life contribute to this transformation. It requires collective efforts from communities, media, and policymakers to create a culture that respects and values individuals irrespective of their gender.

In conclusion, the journey toward gender fairness is a dynamic process that involves dismantling stereotypes, ensuring equal opportunities, and fostering cultural transformation. By challenging societal norms and advocating for inclusive policies, we can pave the way for a future where every individual has the opportunity to thrive, unbound by gender-based constraints. Empowering equality not only aligns with the principles of justice and fairness but also propels societies toward greater prosperity and harmony.

Breaking Chains: The Unfinished Journey Towards Gender Equality"

Gender equality, a beacon of progress in contemporary societies, still faces significant challenges, with deeply rooted stereotypes and systemic barriers hindering its realization. This essay embarks on an exploration of the persistent issues surrounding evenness, emphasizing the imperative to dismantle stereotypes, advocate for equal opportunities, and drive transformative change. As we confront the complexities of the 21st century, the pursuit of authentic equality emerges as not only a societal responsibility but also as an essential catalyst for fostering diversity, inclusivity, and social prosperity.

The journey toward true gender parity necessitates a concerted effort to challenge and dismantle age-old stereotypes that confine individuals within rigid male and female roles. These stereotypes perpetuate harmful biases, limiting opportunities for personal and professional growth. A critical focus should be on dispelling myths surrounding gendered expectations, such as the notion that certain professions are exclusively for one gender. Initiatives promoting diverse role models and challenging societal norms are pivotal in dismantling these restrictive stereotypes.

An indispensable component of achieving gender equality lies in advocating for equal opportunities in education. Educational institutions should implement policies that eradicate barriers and promote inclusivity. This involves addressing gender disparities in STEM fields, encouraging girls to pursue careers in traditionally male-dominated sectors, and ensuring fair and unbiased educational environments. By cultivating an educational landscape that values competence over gender, societies can lay the foundation for a more equitable future.

Achieving genuine gender equality requires a holistic approach that includes systemic change at various levels of society. This involves not only addressing individual attitudes but also transforming institutional practices. Policies promoting equal pay, parental leave, and unbiased hiring practices contribute to dismantling systemic barriers. Additionally, fostering workplace cultures that prioritize diversity and inclusivity plays a crucial role in creating environments where all individuals, regardless of gender, can thrive.

In conclusion, the journey toward gender equality is an ongoing struggle that demands persistent efforts to dismantle stereotypes, advocate for equal opportunities, and drive systemic change. By challenging societal norms and fostering inclusive policies, societies can move closer to realizing the promise of a future where gender does not dictate one's opportunities or potential. Breaking the chains of ingrained biases is not just a societal obligation; it is a transformative endeavor that paves the way for a more just, inclusive, and harmonious world.

When students are assigned to write about gender equality, it isn't just about getting a grade. It's a valuable way to get young minds thinking and talking about how fairness and evenness play out in our world. By putting their thoughts into words, students not only practice expressing themselves but also become part of a bigger conversation about treating everyone fairly. Use this opportunity to challenge stereotypes, call for equal rights, and be a voice for positive change. To succeed, you can buy essay online from our competent writers, who will make sure your teacher will be pleased.

Frequently asked questions

Why is gender equality essay important, how to promote gender equality essay, how to choose the best gender equality essay title.

She was flawless! first time using a website like this, I've ordered article review and i totally adored it! grammar punctuation, content - everything was on point

This writer is my go to, because whenever I need someone who I can trust my task to - I hire Joy. She wrote almost every paper for me for the last 2 years

Term paper done up to a highest standard, no revisions, perfect communication. 10s across the board!!!!!!!

I send him instructions and that's it. my paper was done 10 hours later, no stupid questions, he nailed it.

Sometimes I wonder if Michael is secretly a professor because he literally knows everything. HE DID SO WELL THAT MY PROF SHOWED MY PAPER AS AN EXAMPLE. unbelievable, many thanks

You Might Also Like

New Posts to Your Inbox!

Stay in touch

Gender Equality Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on gender equality essay.

Equality or non-discrimination is that state where every individual gets equal opportunities and rights. Every individual of the society yearns for equal status, opportunity, and rights. However, it is a general observation that there exists lots of discrimination between humans. Discrimination exists because of cultural differences, geographical differences, and gender. Inequality based on gender is a concern that is prevalent in the entire world.  Even in the 21 st century, across globe men and women do not enjoy equal privileges. Gender equality means providing equal opportunities to both men and women in political, economic, education and health aspects.

Importance of Gender Equality

A nation can progress and attain higher development growth only when both men and women are entitled to equal opportunities. Women in the society are often cornered and are refrained from getting equal rights as men to health, education, decision-making and economic independence in terms of wages.

The social structure that prevails since long in such a way that girls do not get equal opportunities as men. Women generally are the caregivers in the family. Because of this, women are mostly involved in household activities. There is lesser participation of women in higher education, decision-making roles, and leadership roles. This gender disparity is a hindrance in the growth rate of a country. When women participate in the workforce increases the economic growth rate of the country increases. Gender equality increases the overall wellbeing of the nation along with economic prosperity .

How is Gender Equality Measured?

Gender equality is an important factor in determining a country’s overall growth. There are several indexes to measure gender equality.

Gender-Related Development Index (GDI) –   GDI is a gender centric measure of Human Development Index. GDI considers parameters like life expectancy, education, and incomes in assessing the gender equality of a country.

Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) – This measure includes much detail aspects like the proportion of seats than women candidates hold in national parliament, percentage of women at economic decision-making role, the income share of female employees.

Gender Equity Index (GEI) – GEI ranks countries on three parameters of gender inequality, those are education, economic participation, and empowerment. However, GEI ignores the health parameter.

Global Gender Gap Index – The World Economic Forum introduced the Global Gender Gap Index in 2006. This index focuses more on identifying the level of female disadvantage. The four important areas that the index considers are economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, health, and survival rate.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Gender Inequality in India

As per the World Economic Forum’s gender gap ranking, India stands at rank 108 out of 149 countries. This rank is a major concern as it highlights the immense gap in opportunities in women with comparison to men. In Indian society from a long time back, the social structure has been such that the women are neglected in many areas like education, health, decision-making areas, financial independence, etc.

Another major reason, which contributes to the discriminatory behavior towards women in India, is the dowry system in marriage.  Because of this dowry system, most Indian families consider girls as a burden.  Preference for son still prevails. Girls have refrained from higher education. Women are not entitled to equal job opportunities and wages. In the 21 st century, women are still preferred gender in home managing activities. Many women quit their job and opt-out from leadership roles because of family commitments. However, such actions are very uncommon among men.

For overall wellbeing and growth of a nation, scoring high on gender equality is the most crucial aspect. Countries with less disparity in gender equality have progressed a lot. The government of India has also started taking steps to ensure gender equality. Several laws and policies are prepared to encourage girls. “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana ” (Save girl, and make girls educated) campaign is created to spread awareness of the importance of girl child.  Several laws to protect girls are also there. However, we need more awareness of spreading knowledge of women rights . In addition, the government should take initiatives to check the correct and proper implementation of policies.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

• Our Programs
• Economic Opportunity
• Financial Empowerment Centers
• ALICE Lives Here
• Signature Events
• Find Support
• Donate Once
• Donate Monthly
• Will & Trust Donations
• Donate Cryptocurrency
• Time & Talent
• Volunteer in DC and Surrounding Areas
• Corporate Citizenship
• Affinity Groups and Regional Councils
• Equity Statement
• Partner Nonprofits
• Corporate Partners
• Stuff the Bus
• Project Community Connect
• Tee Up for Equity
• Weekend Hunger Backpack Program

Home - Blog - What Is Gender Equality? Learn the Definition with Examples

What Is Gender Equality? Learn the Definition with Examples

Feb 07, 2022

by United Way NCA

What Is Gender Equality?

Gender equality is imperative to human rights and peaceful societies and has been proven by myriad research to be important for all communities to thrive. United Way of the National Capital Area believes in equity for all, regardless of race, gender, income and ability . Below, we explain what gender equality is, examples of gender equality in action and how it benefits all people.

What Does Gender Equality Mean?

Gender equality definition is the state in which access to rights or opportunities is unaffected by gender.  It’s not only women who are affected by gender inequality—all genders are impacted, including men, trans and gender-diverse people. This in turn impacts children and families, and people of all ages and backgrounds.

Equality in gender does not mean that women and men will have or need the exact same resources, but that women’s, men’s, trans people’s and gender-diverse people’s rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on their assigned gender at birth .

Examples of Gender Equality

What does gender equality look like in the real world? Below, we list and describe an example of gender equality in various scenarios and how it should look in society.

Example 1: Equality at Home

On average, women around the world do three times as much unpaid work at home as men, including household work and caring for children and family members, and many of these women also work full-time or part-time careers. Gender equality in this example would look like splitting up at-home work as evenly as possible between all genders of a household, so that the burden of taking care of the home and family is not solely on women.

Example 2: Equal Pay for Equal Work

The pay gap between men and women remains strong throughout the United States and around the world, especially for women who are mothers or caretakers . Gender equality in the workforce means being paid the same salary for equal work, regardless of gender. It also means that if a woman takes time off from work to take maternity leave, for example, she will not be punished when she returns to work. She will still be considered for the same promotions, pay raises and career opportunities that she would have been given had she not taken the necessary time off to care for her family.

Example 3: Zero Tolerance for Sexual Harassment and Gender-Based Bias

Whether in the workplace, within a religious group, at a community center or any other group setting, people of all genders deserve to feel safe and be free of bullying and microaggressions, sexual harassment and prejudice based on gender. A society that appreciates and upholds gender equality does not allow for offensive comments, harassment, etc., to be tolerated in any form.

Benefits of Gender Equality

Gender equality makes communities safer, healthier and happier. Countries with greater gender equality are more connected and benefit immensely . Below, we list and describe specific societal benefits of gender equality.

Example 1: Economic Equality

When all genders receive equal job opportunities, society benefits. Studies show a diverse workplace is a more productive workplace , and this diversity includes gender diversity. This success in the workplace translates into the economy, as well. When equal job opportunity is given to all genders, poverty rates are reduced, communities are uplifted and a nation’s GDP is significantly improved.

Example 2: Improved Education

Gender equality in education benefits every child within the school system. Girls who receive an education have a higher likelihood to be healthier and more productive, earning higher incomes and building better futures for their families . This in turn contributes to a stronger economy that benefits all genders and leads to better health within a community. According to UNICEF , when a girl receives a secondary education, her lifetime earnings dramatically increase, the national growth rate rises, child marriage rates decline, child mortality rates decline, maternal mortality rates fall and child stunting drops.

Example 3: Better Health

Studies show gender inequality has a negative impact on many health outcomes, including in regard to family planning, maternal and child health, nutrition, pandemic disease and more . When health systems are transformed to provide equal access to health care for all genders, studies show there are better health outcomes , including reduced depression and PTSD, reduced mortality rates, better self-rated health and reduced alcohol consumption.

How to Promote Gender Equality in Your Community

There are many ways to promote gender equality in daily life, from splitting up household chores equally to fighting gender stereotypes. There are also many groups and nonprofits promoting equity in their communities across the nation, including United Way NCA.

United Way NCA is focused on fostering equity for all community members, including those of all genders. We invite you to get involved in promoting gender equality in our community by giving , advocating , volunteering and by joining our Affinity Group, Women United , who plan and execute community projects benefiting girls, women and families throughout the National Capital Area.

To learn more, visit unitedwaynca.org . When none are ignored, all will thrive.

Recent Posts

It’s Not Too Late to Take Advantage of Free Tax Services and Possibly Earn Larger Refunds

The Gen Z Activism Survey

How Access Supports Education Equality & Equity

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• 06 September 2023

Gender equality: the route to a better world

You have full access to this article via your institution.

The Mosuo people of China include sub-communities in which inheritance passes down either the male or the female line. Credit: TPG/Getty

The fight for global gender equality is nowhere close to being won. Take education: in 87 countries, less than half of women and girls complete secondary schooling, according to 2023 data. Afghanistan’s Taliban continues to ban women and girls from secondary schools and universities . Or take reproductive health: abortion rights have been curtailed in 22 US states since the Supreme Court struck down federal protections, depriving women and girls of autonomy and restricting access to sexual and reproductive health care .

SDG 5, whose stated aim is to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”, is the fifth of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, all of which Nature is examining in a series of editorials. SDG 5 includes targets for ending discrimination and violence against women and girls in both public and private spheres, eradicating child marriage and female genital mutilation, ensuring sexual and reproductive rights, achieving equal representation of women in leadership positions and granting equal rights to economic resources. Globally, the goal is not on track to being achieved, and just a handful of countries have hit all the targets.

How the world should oppose the Taliban’s war on women and girls

In July, the UN introduced two new indices (see go.nature.com/3eus9ue ), the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) and the Global Gender Parity Index (GGPI). The WEI measures women’s ability and freedoms to make their own choices; the GGPI describes the gap between women and men in areas such as health, education, inclusion and decision making. The indices reveal, depressingly, that even achieving a small gender gap does not automatically translate to high levels of women’s empowerment: 114 countries feature in both indices, but countries that do well on both scores cover fewer than 1% of all girls and women.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made things worse, with women bearing the highest burden of extra unpaid childcare when schools needed to close, and subjected to intensified domestic violence. Although child marriages declined from 21% of all marriages in 2016 to 19% in 2022, the pandemic threatened even this incremental progress, pushing up to 10 million more girls into risk of child marriage over the next decade, in addition to the 100 million girls who were at risk before the pandemic.

Of the 14 indicators for SDG 5, only one or two are close to being met by the 2030 deadline. As of 1 January 2023, women occupied 35.4% of seats in local-government assemblies, an increase from 33.9% in 2020 (the target is gender parity by 2030). In 115 countries for which data were available, around three-quarters, on average, of the necessary laws guaranteeing full and equal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights had been enacted. But the UN estimates that worldwide, only 57% of women who are married or in a union make their own decisions regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Systemic discrimination against girls and women by men, in many contexts, remains a colossal barrier to achieving gender equality. But patriarchy is not some “natural order of things” , argues Ruth Mace, an anthropologist at University College London. Hundreds of women-centred societies exist around the world. As the science writer Angela Saini describes in her latest book, The Patriarchs , these are often not the polar opposite of male-dominated systems, but societies in which men and women share decision making .

After Roe v. Wade: dwindling US abortion access is harming health a year later

One example comes from the Mosuo people in China, who have both ‘matrilineal’ and ‘patrilineal’ communities, with rights such as inheritance passing down either the male or female line. Researchers compared outcomes for inflammation and hypertension in men and women in these communities, and found that women in matrilineal societies, in which they have greater autonomy and control over resources, experienced better health outcomes. The researchers found no significant negative effect of matriliny on health outcomes for men ( A.  Z. Reynolds et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117 , 30324–30327; 2020 ).

When it comes to the SDGs, evidence is emerging that a more gender-equal approach to politics and power benefits many goals. In a study published in May, Nobue Amanuma, deputy director of the Integrated Sustainability Centre at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Hayama, Japan, and two of her colleagues tested whether countries with more women legislators, and more younger legislators, are performing better in the SDGs ( N. Amanuma et al. Environ. Res. Lett. 18 , 054018; 2023 ). They found it was so, with the effect more marked for socio-economic goals such as ending poverty and hunger, than for environmental ones such as climate action or preserving life on land. The researchers recommend further qualitative and quantitative studies to better understand the reasons.

The reality that gender equality leads to better outcomes across other SDGs is not factored, however, into most of the goals themselves. Of the 230 unique indicators of the SDGs, 51 explicitly reference women, girls, gender or sex, including the 14 indicators in SDG 5. But there is not enough collaboration between organizations responsible for the different SDGs to ensure that sex and gender are taken into account. The indicator for the sanitation target (SDG 6) does not include data disaggregated by sex or gender ( Nature 620 , 7; 2023 ). Unless we have this knowledge, it will be hard to track improvements in this and other SDGs.

The road to a gender-equal world is long, and women’s power and freedom to make choices is still very constrained. But the evidence from science is getting stronger: distributing power between genders creates the kind of world we all need and want to be living in.

Nature 621 , 8 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02745-9

Reprints and permissions

Related Articles

• Sustainability
• Public health

The world needs a COP for water like the one for climate change

Correspondence 16 APR 24

Don’t dismiss carbon credits that aim to avoid future emissions

Correspondence 02 APR 24

Don’t underestimate the rising threat of groundwater to coastal cities

Correspondence 26 MAR 24

What toilets can reveal about COVID, cancer and other health threats

News Feature 17 APR 24

Smoking bans are coming: what does the evidence say?

News 17 APR 24

It’s time to talk about the hidden human cost of the green transition

Do climate lawsuits lead to action? Researchers assess their impact

News Explainer 16 APR 24

Exclusive: official investigation reveals how superconductivity physicist faked blockbuster results

News 06 APR 24

Is IVF at risk in the US? Scientists fear for the fertility treatment’s future

News 02 APR 24

FACULTY POSITION IN PATHOLOGY RESEARCH

Dallas, Texas (US)

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern Medical Center)

Postdoc Fellow / Senior Scientist

The Yakoub and Sulzer labs at Harvard Medical School-Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Columbia University

Boston, Massachusetts (US)

Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital

Postdoc in Computational Genomics – Machine Learning for Multi-Omics Profiling of Cancer Evolution

Computational Postdoc - Artificial Intelligence in Oncology and Regulatory Genomics and Cancer Evolution at the DKFZ - limited to 2 years

Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg (DE)

German Cancer Research Center in the Helmholtz Association (DKFZ)

Computational Postdoc

The German Cancer Research Center is the largest biomedical research institution in Germany.

PhD / PostDoc Medical bioinformatics (m/f/d)

The Institute of Medical Bioinformatics and Systems Medicine / University of Freiburg is looking for a PhD/PostDoc Medical bioinformatics (m/w/d)

Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg (DE)

University of Freiburg

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Custom Essay, Term Paper & Research paper writing services

• testimonials

Toll Free: +1 (888) 354-4744

Email: [email protected]

Writing custom essays & research papers since 2008

How to write a powerful gender equality essay in 2020.

Raise the question of whether men and women have the same rights, and you’ll have evoked many to speak. That is why there are so many writings on gender equality. Every side is trying to champion for its rights, survival for the fittest it is.

However, what will make your gender equality essay outstanding from the millions of articles available on the internet and in print? That is the hidden secret we are going to dissect bit by bit in this article. So, please keep your eyes peeled because it is a secret, and not many people are entitled to a secret.

Defining Gender Equality

Before proceeding any further, let us first have an understanding of this term and how it is relevant to society today.

Since time immemorial, society has embraced male chauvinism. Equality between men and women has been seen as an almost impossible thing. It is like asking President Donald Trump to quit twitter.

All the best things in life are considered to be for men — talk of education, innovations, white-collar jobs, and even the latest car models. The place of women over the years has been in the kitchen and childbearing.

However, with the championing of gender equality, both men and women are seen as having the same roles and responsibilities in society. Women can now own Companies, drive Porsche vehicles, and even lead countries as presidents.

Let’s get back to our gender equality essay now. When writing an essay on whether man and woman should have equal rights, there are vital considerations that you will have to incorporate.

We will look at them based on the structure of a typical essay.

To start us off, we’ll look at all you need to know about the topic of an essay on gender discrimination.

All you Need to Know About Gender Inequality

The subject of gender inequality is an ocean of ideas. The topic you choose should, therefore, be one that comprehensively deals with one aspect.

It has to be impressive enough and provoke the reader to delve deep into the body to satisfy the curiosity created.

Here are sample gender topics to write about for your gender equality essay:

• How is gender equality in Western countries compared to Africa?
• What is the history of gender equality?
• Should men and women have equal rights?
• How are women discriminated against in society?
• What is the role of UN agencies in gender equality?

The next part is the introduction of a gender issues essay.

Writing the Introduction

The format for an essay introduction remains; the topic sentence, outlining sentences, and the thesis statement. In the gender inequality thesis statement, ensure that you give the main idea of your essay.

As a writer, you should be able to articulate whether your introduction is worth someone’s time or not. Having a captivating introduction for your gender equality essay will act as bait to have the reader’s attention.

For instance, you are talking about equality in education; you can have the following introduction:

Gender discrimination has deprived women of their right to education. Instead of women attending school, they are left at home to fend for the babies and perform house chores. However, both men and women should be given equal access rights to education without undermining the other.”

One can be able to see that the writer is going to champion equality in education, especially on the part of women. Such is how you can structure your introduction paragraph of gender equality related essay.

But here’s the catch.

It is where the writer gets to argue out his or her thesis statement in paragraphs. The pieces of evidence are given in the body to affirm the writer’s point of view. It uses supporting evidence such as facts, statistics, real-life examples, and analysis.

Such a topic as gender equality is broad, and thus the body might be longer. However, you should use the three-body paragraph structure to make your essay succinct and enticing. Remember that too much is boring and short is sweet.

To write the body swiftly, ensure that you brainstorm and have your points well outlined first. It will save you the agony of having to scratch your head for nothing. You might end up pulling your hair for goodness sake.

And if that’s not enough, here’s one more crucial part.

Concluding your Gender Equality Essay

Essays on gender equality also have the same structure for the conclusion. It gives a summary of the arguments made in the body using one sentence or two. On top of providing an abstract of the discussion, it also restates the thesis statement.

Bonus: Free Tips to Guide Your Gender Essay Writing

• Consult a variety of sources on sensitive issues.
• Avoid statements that may provoke one side.
• Maintain objectivity at all times.
• Ensure that you extensively cover every argument in the body
• Have a structure before you start writing your essay.
• Proof-read your work before submission.

And with that, good luck with writing your gender equality essay. Do not leave anything to chance, from the topic, introduction, body, to the conclusion. Every section counts!

Was this article helpful? Then why don’t you try our expert writing masters with any of your essay assignment today? You won’t regret it one single bit.

Search the United Nations

• Member States

Main Bodies

• Secretary-General
• Secretariat
• Emblem and Flag
• ICJ Statute
• Nobel Peace Prize
• Peace and Security
• Human Rights
• Humanitarian Aid
• Sustainable Development and Climate
• International Law
• Global Issues
• Official Languages
• Observances
• Events and News
• Get Involved
• Israel-Gaza Crisis

Gender Equality

The unfinished business of our time.

Women and girls represent half of the world’s population and, therefore, also half of its potential. Gender equality, besides being a fundamental human right, is essential to achieve peaceful societies, with full human potential and sustainable development. Moreover, it has been shown that empowering women spurs productivity and economic growth.

Unfortunately, there is still a long way to go to achieve full equality of rights and opportunities between men and women, warns UN Women. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to end the multiple forms of gender violence and secure equal access to quality education and health, economic resources and participation in political life for both women and girls and men and boys. It is also essential to achieve equal opportunities in access to employment and to positions of leadership and decision-making at all levels.

Guterres highlights that gender equality is more important than ever if we are to create prosperous economies and a healthy planet. However, he admits that we face a critical challenge: an alarming $360 billion annual gender gap by 2030.

To revert this trend, he has identified five key areas that need joint action: Investing in women, ending poverty, implementing gender-responsive financing, shifting to a green economy and care society and supporting feminist change-makers.

The UN Secretary-General, Mr. António Guterres has stated that achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls is the unfinished business of our time, and the greatest human rights challenge in our world.

The United Nations and women

UN support for the rights of women began with the Organization's founding Charter. Among the purposes of the UN declared in  Article 1 of its Charter  is “ To achieve international co-operation … in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion .”

Within the UN’s first year, the Economic and Social Council established its  Commission on the Status of Women , as the principal global policy-making body dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women. Among its earliest accomplishments was ensuring gender neutral language in the draft  Universal Declaration of Human Rights .

Women's rights as a human right

Gender Equality was made part of international human rights law by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948. That milestone document in the history of human rights recognized that “ All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights ” and that “ everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, … birth or other status .”

As the international feminist movement began to gain momentum during the 1970s, the General Assembly declared 1975 as the International Women’s Year and organized the first World Conference on Women, held in Mexico City. At the urging of the Conference, it subsequently declared the years 1976-1985 as the  UN Decade for Women , and established a Voluntary Fund for Decade.

In 1979, the General Assembly adopted the  Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) , which is often described as an International Bill of Rights for Women. In its 30 articles, the Convention explicitly defines discrimination against women and sets up an agenda for national action to end such discrimination. The Convention targets culture and tradition as influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations, and it is the first human rights treaty to affirm the reproductive rights of women.

Five years after the Mexico City conference, a Second World Conference on Women was held in Copenhagen in 1980. The resulting Programme of Action called for stronger national measures to ensure women's ownership and control of property, as well as improvements in women's rights with respect to inheritance, child custody and loss of nationality

Birth of Global Feminism

In 1985, the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace, was held in Nairobi. It was convened at a time when the movement for gender equality had finally gained true global recognition, and 15,000 representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) participated in a parallel NGO Forum.

The event was described by many as “the birth of global feminism”. Realizing that the goals of the Mexico City Conference had not been adequately met, the 157 participating governments adopted the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies to the Year 2000. The document broke new ground by declaring all issues to be women’s issues.

Beijing Conference on Women

The Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, went a step further than the Nairobi Conference. The  Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action  asserted women’s rights as human rights and committed to specific actions to ensure respect for those rights. 

Commission on the Status of Women

The  Commission on the Status of Women  (CSW) is the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. The CSW is instrumental in promoting women’s rights, documenting the reality of women’s lives throughout the world, and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women.

The Commission's priorities for the 2021-2024 period are:

• Women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.
• Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes.
• Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.
• Accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective.

An Organization for Women

On 2 July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously voted to create a single UN body tasked with accelerating progress in achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. The new UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women – or  UN Women  – merged four of the world body’s agencies and offices: the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues, and the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women.

UN Women focuses on four main areas: promoting women's leadership and political participation, empowering women economically, ending violence against women, and supporting women's full and equal participation in peace processes and security efforts.

Women and the Sustainable Development Goals

Equality and empowerment.

The United Nations is now focusing its global development work on the recently-developed 17  Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) . Women have a  critical role to play  in all of the SDGs, with many targets specifically recognizing women’s equality and empowerment as both the objective, and as part of the solution.

Goal 5 , to "Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls" is known as the stand-alone gender goal, because it is dedicated to achieving these ends. Deep legal and legislative changes are needed to ensure women’s rights around the world. While a record 143 countries guaranteed equality between men and women in their Constitutions by 2014, another 52 had not taken this step. 

Stark  gender disparities  remain in economic and political realms. While there has been some progress over the decades, on average women in the labour market still earn 20 per cent less than men globally. As of 2024, only 26.8 per cent of all national parliamentarians were female, a slow rise from 11.3 per cent in 1995.

Eliminating Violence Against Women

The UN system continues to give particular attention to the issue of violence against women. The 1993 General Assembly  Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women  contained “a clear and comprehensive definition of violence against women [and] a clear statement of the rights to be applied to ensure the elimination of violence against women in all its forms”. It represented “a commitment by States in respect of their responsibilities, and a commitment by the international community at large to the elimination of violence against women”.

Violence against women is a pandemic affecting all countries, even those that have made laudable progress in other areas. Worldwide, 30 per cent of women have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence.

In September 2017, the European Union and the United Nations joined forces to launch the  Spotlight Initiative , a global, multi-year initiative that focuses on eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls.

The  International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women  is observed on 25 November.

International Women's Day and other observances

International Women’s Day  is observed annually on 8 March. International Women's Day first emerged from the activities of labour movements at the turn of the twentieth century in North America and across Europe. It is a day, observed by many countries around the world, on which women are recognized for their achievements without regard to divisions, whether national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic or political.

Besides International Women’s Day and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the UN observes other international days dedicated to raising awareness of different aspects of the struggle for gender equality and women empowerment. On February 6, the  International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation  is observed, February 11 is the  International Day of Women and Girls in Science , June 19 is the  International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict , June 23 is  International Widows' Day , October 11 is the  International Day of the Girl Child  and on October 15 the  International Day of Rural Women  is observed.

Gender-inclusive language

Given the key role that language plays in shaping cultural and social attitudes, using gender-inclusive language is a powerful way to promote gender equality and eradicate gender bias.

Being inclusive from a gender language perspective means speaking and writing in a way that does not discriminate against a particular sex, social gender or gender identity, and does not perpetuate gender stereotypes.

These  Guidelines  include recommendations and materials, created to help United Nations staff use gender-inclusive language in any type of communication — oral or written, formal or informal — and are a useful starting point for anyone.

• UN Conferences - Women and gender equality
• 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women (2020)
• Infographic: Human Rights of Women
• Progress of the world’s women
• Child and Youth Safety Online
• Disarmament

Related Stories from the UN System

Read more about gender equality.

• General Assembly
• Security Council
• Economic and Social Council
• Trusteeship Council
• International Court of Justice

Departments / Offices

• UN System Directory
• UN System Chart
• Global Leadership
• UN Information Centres

Resources / Services

• Emergency information
• Reporting Wrongdoing
• Guidelines for gender-inclusive language
• UN iLibrary
• UN Chronicle
• UN Yearbook
• Publications for sale
• Media Accreditation
• NGO accreditation at ECOSOC
• NGO accreditation at DGC
• Visitors’ services
• Procurement
• Internships
• Academic Impact
• UN Archives
• UN Audiovisual Library
• How to donate to the UN system
• Information on COVID-19 (Coronavirus)
• Africa Renewal
• Ten ways the UN makes a difference
• High-level summits 2023

Key Documents

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Convention on the Rights of the Child
• Statute of the International Court of Justice
• Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization

News and Media

• Press Releases
• Spokesperson
• Social Media
• The Essential UN
• Awake at Night podcast

Issues / Campaigns

• Sustainable Development Goals
• Our Common Agenda
• Summit of the Future
• Climate Action
• UN and Sustainability
• Action for Peacekeeping (A4P)
• Global Ceasefire
• Global Crisis Response Group
• Call to Action for Human Rights
• Disability Inclusion Strategy
• Fight Racism
• Hate Speech
• Safety of Journalists
• Rule of Law
• Action to Counter Terrorism
• Victims of Terrorism
• Children and Armed Conflict
• Violence Against Children (SRSG)
• Sexual Violence in Conflict
• Refugees and Migrants
• Action Agenda on Internal Displacement
• Spotlight Initiative
• Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
• Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect
• The Rwanda Genocide
• The Holocaust
• The Question of Palestine
• The Transatlantic Slave Trade
• Decolonization
• Messengers of Peace
• Roadmap for Digital Cooperation
• Digital Financing Task Force
• Data Strategy
• Countering Disinformation
• UN75: 2020 and Beyond
• Women Rise for All
• Stop the Red Sea Catastrophe
• Black Sea Grain Initiative Joint Coordination Centre
• Türkiye-Syria Earthquake Response (Donate)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ).

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.

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

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).

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

Gender Inequality 101: Meaning, Facts, and Ways to Take Action

Gender inequality is the prejudicial treatment of people based on their gender. While it affects women and girls most prominently, gender inequality is not limited to the male/female binary.   

Gender inequality is a persistent and global problem. While equality in education and employment has improved, things like COVID-19 and climate change have stalled progress in many regions. In this article, we’ll discuss the meaning of gender inequality, the most important facts about it, and how you can take action.

What’s the meaning of gender inequality?

Gender inequality occurs when people face discrimination , fewer opportunities, and increased violence because of their gender. When gender inequality exists in a society, it produces unequal outcomes that hurt not just those targeted because of their gender, but everyone else, too. Six factors can help us define gender inequality’s meaning and impact:

#1. Economic inequality

A person’s gender impacts how much money they make. According to UN Women, women make just 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Group-specific gaps widen when you look at additional factors like a person’s ethnicity, race, age, immigration status, whether they have children, and so on. This has a huge impact on an individual’s life, but failing to close the gap impacts the global economy, too. According to a Moody’s Analytics report, the global economy could experience a $7 trillion boost if there was no gender gap. Currently, closing the gap could take as long as 132 years.

#2. Less political representation

Men have dominated the political world for centuries, while other genders lack significant representation. Based on data from January 2023, it would take another 130 years for women to achieve gender equality in the world’s highest positions of power . Only 17 countries have a female Head of State, while 19 have a female Head of Government. Several obstacles make political representation difficult, such as gender-imbalanced funding, discriminatory election rules, and gender stereotypes surrounding political ambition and power.

#3. Unequal education

Education access plays a huge role in gender inequality. When girls don’t get the same opportunities as boys, they face significant barriers for the rest of their lives. A lack of education can lead to poorly-paid and dangerous jobs, increased risks for gender-based violence, and poor health. Studies have shown links between good education and improved health not only for women, but their children, too. The gender gaps in education have been narrowing for years, but certain parts of the world still struggle. As an example, since the Taliban regained control in Afghanistan, most girls have been banned from receiving any education beyond the sixth grade .

#4. Worse healthcare 

Gender often affects a person’s access to quality healthcare. Bias is a big reason why. According to research, women are less represented in leadership, less represented in clinical studies, and less likely to have their symptoms taken seriously. Factors like race contribute to these issues. As an example, Black women in the United States are much more likely to die in childbirth compared to white women. Trans people are also affected by gender inequality in healthcare. They’re much more likely to endure discrimination and lower-quality treatments, which leads to worse health outcomes.

#5. Increased violence

Gender-based violence is one of the most persistent global problems. Based on data from the World Health Organization, at least 1 in 3 women have experienced sexual or physical violence . That includes violence perpetrated by an intimate partner or someone who isn’t their partner. Most jarringly, 1 in 4 of those women experience violence between 15-24 years old. Because many women do not report abuse because of stigma or fears of retaliation, gender-based violence is most likely more prevalent than reported. Trans people and others who do not conform to gender binaries also face increased risks of violence.

#6. Unequal household responsibilities

Gender inequality can manifest in the unequal distribution of household responsibilities. Within a single home, it may not seem significant, but globally, women perform more hours of unpaid work (childcare, cleaning, cooking, etc) than men. When combined, women perform 12.5 billion hours of work without pay . They subsidize labor that keeps families afloat, supports the economy, and fills in for social services. These responsibilities also give women less time to work for money.

What facts do you need to know about gender inequality?

Gender inequality is complex, but there are five facts everyone should know:

#1. No country has reached full parity

No country has achieved gender equality, but nine of the top 10 have closed at least 80% of their gaps. For 14 years, Iceland has been the most gender-equal country. It’s closed 91.2% of its gender gap. The healthcare and education gaps are closed entirely, and since 2018, Icelandic companies with more than 25 employees have been legally required to show they pay equal wages. Norway, Finland, and Sweden are the next most equal countries . Overall, health, education, and political empowerment improved around the world, but economic participation and the opportunity gap expanded.

#2. COVID-19 worsened gender inequality

The world was making decent progress on gender equality, but the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just pause improvements. It reversed them. A global study published in the Lancet found that women experienced harsher social and economic impacts than men. The worst gaps were in employment and unpaid labor. Women and girls were also more likely to leave school and face more gender-based violence. Why? COVID-19 exacerbated existing issues . Women make up more of the informal economy, which was hit hard by COVID-19, and are more likely to take on unpaid labor like caring for children and elderly family members. It will take a lot of hard work to get gender equality back on track.

#3. Climate change negatively impacts gender equality 

Climate change can’t have intentional biases against women, but it affects women differently regardless. This is especially true in areas most affected by drought, floods, famines, and other climate-driven events. In these regions, women rely on natural resources and agriculture for their livelihoods. As climate change makes agricultural activities harder, girls often need to leave school to help their families. Climate change also fuels conflict, which makes girls and women more vulnerable to human trafficking, child marriage, and other violence. When fighting for gender equality, experts and organizations cannot forget about climate change .

#4. Poverty is gendered

Women and girls are more likely to live in poverty than men. According to 2022 forecasts from the UNDP and the Pardee Center for International Futures, as many as 416 million women could be living in extreme poverty in 2030 compared to 401 million men. This represents a “high damage” scenario, but even in lower estimates, women are still more likely to live on just $2.15 a day. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa are most at risk.

#5. Gender inequality has mental health consequences

Mental health is a complex combination of factors, but studies show gender inequality’s negative effect on mental health. Studies show a link between gender-based discrimination and mental health issues like chronic stress and trauma. Women are also more likely to have anxiety, panic disorders, depression, eating disorders, PTSD, and so on. It’s difficult to get a full picture of society’s mental health because of stigma and research limitations. However, if men do suffer from mental illness at the same rate as women, but are either not seeking help or not reporting it, it could still be considered an effect of gender inequality. Gendering emotions and conditions like anxiety and depression hurt everyone.

In your opinion, which root of gender inequality needs to be addressed more?

• The gender pay gap
• Cultural norms and stereotypes
• A lack of educational opportunities
• Unequal distributions of unpaid labor and household responsibilities
• A lack of representation in work and political leadership

View Results

What are ways to take action against gender inequality?

Gender inequality spreads its roots across areas like work, household responsibilities, healthcare, education, and more. Here are four ways to take action:

#1. Increase funding for education and social services

While education equality has seen significant victories, it’s still being threatened in many places. Increasing funds to areas like teacher salaries, operating expenses, and programs for girls are vital, but you can also help education access by supporting communities. Girls often leave school because their labor fills in gaps in social services, but when communities have the social services they need, girls are more likely to stay in school. School needs to be a safe place, too, so action can be taken in areas like building safety, clean water and sanitation, policies on harassment and bullying, and teacher training.

#2. Fight for reproductive rights

Reproductive rights have suffered in recent years. Every year, millions of people don’t receive quality care for menstruation, pregnancy, abortion, and other reproductive health needs. People can take action by advocating for increased healthcare access and legal protections, and by donating time or money to organizations that provide essential health supplies and services. Gender equality is closely linked to reproductive freedom, so it’s essential people have the right to have or not have children.

#3. Advocate for increased economic protections and equal pay

The link between economic inequality and gender inequality is one of the toughest to address. When people can’t participate equally in the economy because of their gender, it ignites a trail of consequences that can affect the healthcare, housing, education, and wealth of generations to come. Economic protections like inheritance reform and land rights are essential, while equal pay for equal work, flexible work arrangements, and support for unpaid work matter, too.

#4. Speak out against discriminatory policies and behavior

Gender inequality is an economic and political reality, but it has social and cultural effects, as well. People can take action by calling out discriminatory policies. Some may not mention gender, but if the outcomes contribute to historical gender inequality or harmful discrimination, they need to be addressed. Discriminatory behavior and language should be called out, as well. While jokes may seem harmless, they hurt individuals and strengthen the mindsets that help gender inequality endure.

You may also like

15 Great Charities to Donate to in 2024

15 Quotes Exposing Injustice in Society

14 Trusted Charities Helping Civilians in Palestine

The Great Migration: History, Causes and Facts

Social Change 101: Meaning, Examples, Learning Opportunities

Rosa Parks: Biography, Quotes, Impact

Top 20 Issues Women Are Facing Today

Top 20 Issues Children Are Facing Today

15 Root Causes of Climate Change

15 Facts about Rosa Parks

Abolitionist Movement: History, Main Ideas, and Activism Today

The Biggest 15 NGOs in the UK

About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

• CBSE Class 10th
• CBSE Class 12th
• UP Board 10th
• UP Board 12th
• Bihar Board 10th
• Bihar Board 12th
• Top Schools in India
• Top Schools in Delhi
• Top Schools in Mumbai
• Top Schools in Chennai
• Top Schools in Hyderabad
• Top Schools in Kolkata
• Top Schools in Pune
• Top Schools in Bangalore

Products & Resources

• JEE Main Knockout April
• Free Sample Papers
• Free Ebooks
• NCERT Notes
• NCERT Syllabus
• NCERT Books
• RD Sharma Solutions
• Navodaya Vidyalaya Admission 2024-25
• NCERT Solutions
• NCERT Solutions for Class 12
• NCERT Solutions for Class 11
• NCERT solutions for Class 10
• NCERT solutions for Class 9
• NCERT solutions for Class 8
• NCERT Solutions for Class 7
• JEE Main 2024
• MHT CET 2024
• JEE Advanced 2024
• BITSAT 2024
• View All Engineering Exams
• Colleges Accepting B.Tech Applications
• Top Engineering Colleges in India
• Engineering Colleges in India
• Engineering Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• Engineering Colleges Accepting JEE Main
• Top IITs in India
• Top NITs in India
• Top IIITs in India
• JEE Main College Predictor
• JEE Main Rank Predictor
• MHT CET College Predictor
• AP EAMCET College Predictor
• GATE College Predictor
• KCET College Predictor
• JEE Advanced College Predictor
• View All College Predictors
• JEE Main Question Paper
• JEE Main Cutoff
• JEE Main Answer Key
• JEE Main Result
• Download E-Books and Sample Papers
• Compare Colleges
• B.Tech College Applications
• JEE Advanced Registration
• MAH MBA CET Exam
• View All Management Exams

Colleges & Courses

• MBA College Admissions
• MBA Colleges in India
• Top IIMs Colleges in India
• Top Online MBA Colleges in India
• MBA Colleges Accepting XAT Score
• BBA Colleges in India
• XAT College Predictor 2024
• SNAP College Predictor
• NMAT College Predictor
• MAT College Predictor 2024
• CMAT College Predictor 2024
• CAT Percentile Predictor 2023
• CAT 2023 College Predictor
• CMAT 2024 Registration
• TS ICET 2024 Registration
• CMAT Exam Date 2024
• MAH MBA CET Cutoff 2024
• Download Helpful Ebooks
• List of Popular Branches
• QnA - Get answers to your doubts
• IIM Fees Structure
• AIIMS Nursing
• Top Medical Colleges in India
• Top Medical Colleges in India accepting NEET Score
• Medical Colleges accepting NEET
• List of Medical Colleges in India
• List of AIIMS Colleges In India
• Medical Colleges in Maharashtra
• Medical Colleges in India Accepting NEET PG
• NEET College Predictor
• NEET PG College Predictor
• NEET MDS College Predictor
• DNB CET College Predictor
• DNB PDCET College Predictor
• NEET Application Form 2024
• NEET PG Application Form 2024
• NEET Cut off
• NEET Online Preparation
• Download Helpful E-books
• LSAT India 2024
• Colleges Accepting Admissions
• Top Law Colleges in India
• Law College Accepting CLAT Score
• List of Law Colleges in India
• Top Law Colleges in Delhi
• Top Law Collages in Indore
• Top Law Colleges in Chandigarh
• Top Law Collages in Lucknow

Predictors & E-Books

• CLAT College Predictor
• MHCET Law ( 5 Year L.L.B) College Predictor
• AILET College Predictor
• Sample Papers
• Compare Law Collages
• Careers360 Youtube Channel
• CLAT Syllabus 2025
• CLAT Previous Year Question Paper
• AIBE 18 Result 2023
• NID DAT Exam
• Pearl Academy Exam

Animation Courses

• Animation Courses in India
• Animation Courses in Bangalore
• Animation Courses in Mumbai
• Animation Courses in Pune
• Animation Courses in Chennai
• Animation Courses in Hyderabad
• Design Colleges in India
• Fashion Design Colleges in Bangalore
• Fashion Design Colleges in Mumbai
• Fashion Design Colleges in Pune
• Fashion Design Colleges in Delhi
• Fashion Design Colleges in Hyderabad
• Fashion Design Colleges in India
• Top Design Colleges in India
• Free Design E-books
• List of Branches
• Careers360 Youtube channel
• NIFT College Predictor
• UCEED College Predictor
• NID DAT College Predictor
• IPU CET BJMC
• JMI Mass Communication Entrance Exam
• IIMC Entrance Exam
• Media & Journalism colleges in Delhi
• Media & Journalism colleges in Bangalore
• Media & Journalism colleges in Mumbai
• List of Media & Journalism Colleges in India
• CA Intermediate
• CA Foundation
• CS Executive
• CS Professional
• Difference between CA and CS
• Difference between CA and CMA
• CA Full form
• CMA Full form
• CS Full form
• CA Salary In India

Top Courses & Careers

• Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com)
• Master of Commerce (M.Com)
• Company Secretary
• Cost Accountant
• Charted Accountant
• Credit Manager
• Financial Advisor
• Top Commerce Colleges in India
• Top Government Commerce Colleges in India
• Top Private Commerce Colleges in India
• Top M.Com Colleges in Mumbai
• Top B.Com Colleges in India
• IT Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• IT Colleges in Uttar Pradesh
• MCA Colleges in India
• BCA Colleges in India

Quick Links

• Information Technology Courses
• Programming Courses
• Web Development Courses
• Data Analytics Courses
• Big Data Analytics Courses
• RUHS Pharmacy Admission Test
• Top Pharmacy Colleges in India
• Pharmacy Colleges in Pune
• Pharmacy Colleges in Mumbai
• Colleges Accepting GPAT Score
• Pharmacy Colleges in Lucknow
• List of Pharmacy Colleges in Nagpur
• GPAT Result
• GPAT 2024 Admit Card
• GPAT Question Papers
• NCHMCT JEE 2024
• Mah BHMCT CET
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Delhi
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Hyderabad
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Mumbai
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Maharashtra
• B.Sc Hotel Management
• Hotel Management
• Diploma in Hotel Management and Catering Technology

Diploma Colleges

• Top Diploma Colleges in Maharashtra
• UPSC IAS 2024
• SSC CGL 2024
• IBPS RRB 2024
• Previous Year Sample Papers
• Free Competition E-books
• Sarkari Result
• QnA- Get your doubts answered
• UPSC Previous Year Sample Papers
• CTET Previous Year Sample Papers
• SBI Clerk Previous Year Sample Papers
• NDA Previous Year Sample Papers

Upcoming Events

• NDA Application Form 2024
• UPSC IAS Application Form 2024
• CDS Application Form 2024
• CTET Admit card 2024
• HP TET Result 2023
• SSC GD Constable Admit Card 2024
• UPTET Notification 2024
• SBI Clerk Result 2024

Other Exams

• SSC CHSL 2024
• UP PCS 2024
• UGC NET 2024
• RRB NTPC 2024
• IBPS PO 2024
• IBPS Clerk 2024
• IBPS SO 2024
• Top University in USA
• Top University in Canada
• Top University in Ireland
• Top Universities in UK
• Top Universities in Australia
• Best MBA Colleges in Abroad
• Business Management Studies Colleges

Top Countries

• Study in USA
• Study in UK
• Study in Canada
• Study in Australia
• Study in Ireland
• Study in Germany
• Study in China
• Study in Europe

Student Visas

• Student Visa Canada
• Student Visa UK
• Student Visa USA
• Student Visa Australia
• Student Visa Germany
• Student Visa New Zealand
• Student Visa Ireland
• CUET PG 2024
• IGNOU B.Ed Admission 2024
• DU Admission
• UP B.Ed JEE 2024
• DDU Entrance Exam
• IIT JAM 2024
• IGNOU Online Admission 2024
• Universities in India
• Top Universities in India 2024
• Top Colleges in India
• Top Universities in Uttar Pradesh 2024
• Top Universities in Bihar
• Top Universities in Madhya Pradesh 2024
• Top Universities in Tamil Nadu 2024
• Central Universities in India
• CUET PG Admit Card 2024
• IGNOU Date Sheet
• CUET Mock Test 2024
• CUET Application Form 2024
• CUET PG Syllabus 2024
• CUET Participating Universities 2024
• CUET Previous Year Question Paper
• CUET Syllabus 2024 for Science Students
• E-Books and Sample Papers
• CUET Exam Pattern 2024
• CUET Exam Date 2024
• CUET Syllabus 2024
• IGNOU Exam Form 2024
• IGNOU Result
• CUET PG Courses 2024

Engineering Preparation

• Knockout JEE Main 2024
• Test Series JEE Main 2024
• JEE Main 2024 Rank Booster

Medical Preparation

• Knockout NEET 2024
• Test Series NEET 2024
• Rank Booster NEET 2024

Online Courses

• JEE Main One Month Course
• NEET One Month Course
• IBSAT Free Mock Tests
• IIT JEE Foundation Course
• Knockout BITSAT 2024
• Career Guidance Tool

Top Streams

• IT & Software Certification Courses
• Engineering and Architecture Certification Courses
• Programming And Development Certification Courses
• Business and Management Certification Courses
• Marketing Certification Courses
• Health and Fitness Certification Courses
• Design Certification Courses

Specializations

• Digital Marketing Certification Courses
• Cyber Security Certification Courses
• Artificial Intelligence Certification Courses
• Business Analytics Certification Courses
• Data Science Certification Courses
• Cloud Computing Certification Courses
• Machine Learning Certification Courses
• View All Certification Courses
• UG Degree Courses
• PG Degree Courses
• Short Term Courses
• Free Courses
• Online Degrees and Diplomas
• Compare Courses

Top Providers

• Coursera Courses
• Udemy Courses
• Edx Courses
• Swayam Courses
• upGrad Courses
• Simplilearn Courses
• Great Learning Courses

Access premium articles, webinars, resources to make the best decisions for career, course, exams, scholarships, study abroad and much more with

Plan, Prepare & Make the Best Career Choices

Gender Equality Essay

Everyone should live as they want in society, and there should be no discrimination. Equality in society is achieved when all people, regardless of their caste, gender, colour, profession, and status rank, are considered equal. Another way to describe equality is that everyone gets the same rights and opportunities to develop and progress forward. Here are a few sample essays on ‘Gender Equality’.

100 Words Essay On Gender Equality

Gender equality is the belief that men and women should be treated and perceived as equals in society, including all areas such as education, employment, and in decision-making positions. It is a fundamental human right and a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable world.

Despite significant progress in advancing gender equality, women and girls continue to face barriers and discrimination in many areas of society. This includes the gender pay gap, difficult access to education and employment opportunities, and limited representation in leadership positions. Creating a more equal society benefits everyone, as it leads to greater prosperity and happiness for all. It is important for individuals, communities, and governments to work towards achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls to reach their full potential.

200 Words Essay On Gender Equality

Gender equality is the equal treatment and perception of individuals of all genders in society.

Importance Of Gender Equality

Gender equality is important because it is a fundamental human right and is necessary for a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable society. When everyone, regardless of their gender, is treated fairly and has equal opportunities, it can lead to greater prosperity and happiness for all.

Additionally, gender equality can have a positive impact on economic growth and development. When women and girls are able to fully participate and get proper education and employment opportunities, it can lead to increased productivity and innovation. It can also contribute to more balanced and representative decision-making, which can lead to more effective and fair policies and practices.

Furthermore, gender equality is essential for promoting social justice and fairness. When women and girls are marginalized and discriminated against, it can lead to a range of negative outcomes, including poverty, poor health, and reduced opportunities for personal and professional development. Overall, the promotion of gender equality is important for creating a more equal, fair, and just society for all.

Encouraging Gender Equality

Efforts to promote gender equality must involve the active participation and engagement of both men and women. This includes challenging and changing harmful gender norms and stereotypes, and promoting policies and laws that protect and advance the rights of women and girls.

500 Words Essay On Gender Equality

Everyone in the country has the same fundamental freedom to pursue happiness whichever way they see fit. It's possible if people of various backgrounds (race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic class, gender) are treated with respect and dignity. Gender disparity is the most noticeable kind of prejudice. Gender discrimination persists even in many modern nations and calls for immediate action. When men and women are given the same opportunities, we will achieve gender equality. Furthermore, this essay will outline the many issues women encounter due to gender discrimination.

Prevalence Of Gender Inequality

Gender inequality is prevalent in many sectors and areas of society. Some examples include:

Education: Women and girls may face barriers to accessing education, such as lack of resources, cultural or societal barriers, and discrimination.

Employment: Women and girls may face discrimination in the workplace, including lower pay for the same work as men, lack of promotion opportunities, and limited representation in leadership positions.

Health care: Women and girls may face discrimination and inadequate access to quality health care, particularly in areas related to reproductive and sexual health.

Political representation: Women are often underrepresented in political leadership positions and decision-making processes.

Domestic violence: Women and girls may face higher rates of domestic violence and abuse, and may lack adequate protection and support from the justice system.

Media and advertising: Women and girls are often portrayed in stereotypical and objectifying ways in the media and advertising, which can reinforce harmful gender norms and stereotypes.

Gender inequality is a widespread issue that affects many areas of society, and it is important to work towards promoting gender equality in all sectors.

How India Can Achieve Gender Equality

Achieving gender equality in India will require a multi-faceted approach that involves addressing social norms and stereotypes, strengthening laws and policies, increasing women's representation in leadership positions, promoting women's economic empowerment, and improving access to health care.

Address social norms and stereotypes: It is important to challenge and change harmful gender norms and stereotypes that contribute to gender inequality. This can be done through education campaigns and programs that promote gender equality and challenge traditional gender roles.

Strengthen laws and policies: India can work to strengthen laws and policies that protect and advance the rights of women and girls, such as laws against domestic violence and discrimination, and policies that promote equal pay for equal work and access to education and employment.

Increase women's representation in leadership positions: India can work to increase the representation of women in leadership positions, including in politics, business, and other sectors, to ensure that women have a stronger voice in decision-making processes.

Promote women's economic empowerment: Providing women with access to education, employment, and financial resources can help to empower them and enable them to fully participate in society.

Improve access to health care: Ensuring that women and girls have access to quality health care, including reproductive and sexual health care, is essential for promoting gender equality.

My Experience

I remember one time when I was working as an intern at a small consulting firm. At the end of my internship, I was offered a full-time position. However, when I received the offer letter, I noticed that my male colleagues who were also being offered full-time positions had been offered a higher salary than me, even though we had all performed the same job duties during our internships.

I was frustrated and felt that I was being treated unfairly because of my gender. I decided to bring this issue to the attention of my supervisor, and after some negotiation, I was able to secure a salary that was equal to that of my male colleagues.

This experience taught me the importance of advocating for myself and not accepting inequality, and it also made me more aware of the ways in which gender bias can manifest in the workplace. I believe that it is important for individuals to speak up and take action when they see instances of gender inequality, and for organizations to make a conscious effort to promote gender equality and fairness in all aspects of their operations.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

• Construction
• Entertainment
• Manufacturing
• Information Technology

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi . 

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software. 

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story. 

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or  MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.  

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

ITSM Manager

Automation test engineer.

An Automation Test Engineer job involves executing automated test scripts. He or she identifies the project’s problems and troubleshoots them. The role involves documenting the defect using management tools. He or she works with the application team in order to resolve any issues arising during the testing process. 

Applications for Admissions are open.

Aakash iACST Scholarship Test 2024

Get up to 90% scholarship on NEET, JEE & Foundation courses

SAT® | CollegeBoard

Registeration closing on 19th Apr for SAT® | One Test-Many Universities | 90% discount on registrations fee | Free Practice | Multiple Attempts | no penalty for guessing

JEE Main Important Chemistry formulas

As per latest 2024 syllabus. Chemistry formulas, equations, & laws of class 11 & 12th chapters

TOEFL ® Registrations 2024

Thinking of Studying Abroad? Think the TOEFL® test. Register now & Save 10% on English Proficiency Tests with Gift Cards

Resonance Coaching

Enroll in Resonance Coaching for success in JEE/NEET exams

NEET 2024 Most scoring concepts

Just Study 32% of the NEET syllabus and Score upto 100% marks

Everything about Education

Latest updates, Exclusive Content, Webinars and more.

Download Careers360 App's

Regular exam updates, QnA, Predictors, College Applications & E-books now on your Mobile

Cetifications

We Appeared in

Centre for Education and International Development (CEID), IOE

A forum for staff, students, alumni and guests to write about and around CEID's five thematic areas of engagement.

What do we mean by gender equality in education, and how can we measure it?

By CEID Blogger, on 18 May 2021

By  Helen Longlands

Gender equality in education is a matter of social justice, concerned with rights, opportunities and freedoms. Gender equality in education is crucial for sustainable development, for peaceful societies and for individual wellbeing. At local, national and global levels, gender equality in education remains a priority area for governments, civil society and multilateral organisations. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and 2020-2030 Decade of Action commit the global community to achieving quality education (Goal 4) and gender equality (Goal 5) by 2030. The G7 Foreign and Development Ministers, meeting this summer in the UK, have made fresh commitments to supporting gender equality and girls’ education , which build on those they made in 2018 and 2019 . Yet fulfilling these agendas and promises not only depends on galvanising sufficient support and resourcing but also on developing sufficient means of measuring and evaluating progress.

The urgency for gender equality in education has been compounded by the profound impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has exposed, exacerbated and created new forms of intersecting inequalities and injustices associated with gender and education. School closures have resulted in millions more children out of school, many of whom may never return, particularly the poorest and most marginalised girls . While UNESCO estimates that over 11 million girls are at risk of not going back to school once the worst of the pandemic is over, the Malala Fund indicates this figure could be as high as 20 million . Cases of violence against women and children have also risen during the pandemic. A recent review by the Centre for Global Development of studies on low and middle income countries presents evidence of an increase in incidences of various forms of gender-based violence, including intimate partner violence, harassment, and violence against children. Assessment by UN Women connects this rise in violence to Covid-19 measures and consequences, including the closures of schools, suspension of community support systems, and increasing rates of unemployment and alcohol abuse. Meanwhile, heavier burdens of caregiving responsibilities during the pandemic, as well as reduced access to sexual and reproductive health knowledge and resources , limited availability of technology to support learning , and low levels of digital technology skills have gendered dimensions and risk further widening existing gender inequalities and power imbalances associated with education.

The effects of the pandemic add to the challenges of achieving gender equality in education and to the complexities involved in evaluating progress towards it. As we continue to develop and extend response, recovery and sustainability initiatives, to build back better , it is important to have explicit and honest discussions about gender and other intersecting inequalities in education. And it is vital to ensure we have robust and reliable ways of identifying, evaluating and holding people to account for these inequalities and their underlying causes in order to build more just and resilient societies. How we do this, however, is not straightforward and presents many conceptual and practical challenges around understanding, accessing and utilising the information, resources and approaches we need. What do we mean when we talk about gender equality in education, how can we measure progress towards it, and how will we know when we achieve it?

The AGEE project’s theoretical and methodological approach draws on key ideas from the capability approach, including the importance of public debate and democratic deliberation, recognition of how inequalities, opportunities and freedoms connect to the complexities of the physical, political and social environment as well as the distribution of resources, and a focus on both the interpersonal and the individual. We see these ideas as crucial components to identifying, understanding and meaningfully measuring gender inequalities and equality in education in diverse local contexts in ways that capture both unique and more general issues as well as longstanding and emerging concerns.

Thus our aim is to help refocus the policy attention beyond gender parity in education to a more substantive understanding and recognition of what gender equality in education could or should entail within and across different contexts, and provide clarity on the data needed for public policy. Gender parity comprises a simple ratio of girls to boys or women to men in a given aspect of education, such as enrolment, participation, attainment or teacher deployment. Gender parity is a clear and uncomplicated measure, which makes it appealing to policymakers and practitioners, and has led to its widespread use as a measure of gender equality in education in national and global development frameworks. This is seen in many of the targets for SDG4 on education and previously in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (2000-2015). However, gender parity is also an inadequate measure on its own because it is unable to capture more complex forms of gender inequality, the conditions and practices that underpin them, the ways in which they intersect with other forms of inequality and injustice, and the short and longer term consequences for individuals and societies. While it is important to ensure all children can access, attend and complete school, which are all issues that gender parity can monitor, it cannot measure issues such as girls’ or boys’ lived experiences of gender discrimination or violence in and around school, or gender inequalities associated with curricula, learning materials, pedagogic approaches or work practices.

Ongoing consultations and debates with stakeholders at community, national and international level are thus key components of AGEE’s research approach. Through them, we have sought to develop a deeper understanding of local, national and global forms of gender inequality and injustice in education and the ways these interconnect. We have scrutinised whether or not existing measurement techniques document this in order to enhance work on gender equality in policy and practice. Over the past few years, through workshops, interviews, technical meetings, academic papers, conference presentations, seminars and teaching, we have engaged in critical participatory dialogue with a wide range of key national and international stakeholders in education and gender, including representatives from governments, national statistics offices, civil society, international organisations, academics and students. This dialogue has explored and interrogated understandings of and debates around gender, accountability, measurement and data, and collated information on the range of factors, relationships, conditions and available data associated with gender equality in education.

Through this in-depth participatory process, we have developed, adapted and refined the AGEE Framework. The Framework is designed to be robust and comprehensive as well as flexible and adaptable, in order both to capture complex, enduring and widespread forms of inequalities, and to be responsive to local characteristics and changing conditions, including forms of crisis. The AGEE Framework comprises six interconnected domains for monitoring and evaluating gender equality in education: Resources; Values; Opportunities; Participation in Education; Knowledge, Understanding and Skills; and Outcomes. And we have identified a number of indicators and related existing or potential data sources to populate these domains.

If you would like to learn more about the AGEE project and engage with our work to support gender equality in education, please visit our website: www.gendereddata.org , where you can find more information about our research and the AGEE Framework, and join our community of practice.

Join the special event on May 27, 2021 where the AGEE Framework will be presented in detail : The politics of measuring gender equality in education: Perspectives for the G7

Acknowledgements:

Members of the AGEE project team: Elaine Unterhalter (UCL and AGEE PI), Rosie Peppin Vaughan (UCL), Relebohile Moletsane (UKZN), Esme Kadzamira (University of Malawi) and Catherine Jere (UEA).

Filed under CEID , Gender , Inequalities

One Response to “What do we mean by gender equality in education, and how can we measure it?”

your blog is very useful and your content ideas is wonderful nice job…

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

CEID | Twitter | Facebook

Recent Posts

• Demystifying Doctoral Research Fieldwork – “Expecting the Unexpected”
• A Call for Peace with Justice in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel – recognising the pivotal role of education
• The perfect immigration policy? ‘Educate’ children of migrants to pull up the drawbridge
• Learning the history, identity, and education of Tibetans-in-exile through Tibetan Terms
• The Elephant in the (Class)room

Subscribe by Email

Completely spam free, opt out any time.

Please, insert a valid email.

Thank you, your email will be added to the mailing list once you click on the link in the confirmation email.

Spam protection has stopped this request. Please contact site owner for help.

This form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Gender equality and education

Gender equality is a global priority at UNESCO. Globally, 122 million girls and 128 million boys are out of school. Women still account for almost two-thirds of all adults unable to read.

UNESCO calls for attention to gender equality throughout the education system in relation to access, content, teaching and learning context and practices, learning outcomes, and life and work opportunities. The  UNESCO Strategy for gender equality in and through education (2019-2025)  focuses on a system-wide transformation to benefit all learners equally in three key areas: better data to inform action, better legal and policy frameworks to advance rights and better teaching and learning practices to empower. 

What you need to know about education and gender equality

"her education, our future" documentary film.

Released on 7 March for 2024 International Women’s Day, “Her Education, Our Future” is a documentary film following the lives of Anee, Fabiana, Mkasi and Tainá – four young women across three continents who struggle to fulfill their right to education. 

This documentary film offers a spectacular dive into the transformative power of education and showcases how empowering girls and women through education improves not only their lives, but also those of their families, communities and indeed all of society. 

Key figures

of which 122 million are girls and 128 million are boys

of which 56% are women

for every 100 young women

Empowering communities: UNESCO in action

Keeping girls in the picture

Everyone can play a role in supporting girls’ education

UNESCO’s new drive to accelerate action for girls’ and women’s education

2022 GEM Report Gender Report: Deepening the debate on those still left behind

Capacity building tools

• From access to empowerment: operational tools to advance gender equality in and through education
• Communication strategy: UNESCO guidance on communicating on gender equality in and through education
• Communication tools
• Keeping girls in the picture: youth advocacy toolkit
• Keeping girls in the picture: community radio toolkit

Monitoring SDG 4: equity and inclusion in education

Resources from UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report.

Related items

• Gender equality
• Policy Advice
• Girls education
• See more add