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Peer-reviewed

Research Article

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

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

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

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

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

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

* E-mail: [email protected]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor: Elisa Ughetto, Politecnico di Torino, ITALY

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Data collection

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

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

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

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

Text processing and keyword extraction

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

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

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

Classification of research topics

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

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

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

Evaluation of semantic importance

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overview of main topics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compensation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Decision-making.

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

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

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

Career progression.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Performance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Organization.

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

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

Human capital.

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

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

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

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

Emerging topics: Leadership and entrepreneurship

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

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

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

Research gaps and conclusions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Supporting information

S1 text. keywords used for paper selection..

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

Acknowledgments

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

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Promoting Gender Equality: A Systematic Review of Interventions

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• Volume 35 , pages 318–343, ( 2022 )

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• Michaela Guthridge   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5157-9839 1 , 3 ,
• Maggie Kirkman 2 ,
• Tania Penovic 4 , 5 &
• Melita J. Giummarra 1 , 5  

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More than four decades have passed since the United Nation’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was adopted. Now is an opportune time to consider whether the interventions seeking to realise CEDAW’s aspirations have brought us closer to achieving gender equality. This systematic review aimed to identify and synthesise evidence for the effectiveness of social justice, cognitive, or behaviour-change interventions that sought to reduce gender inequality, gender bias, or discrimination against women or girls. Interventions could be implemented in any context, with any mode of delivery and duration, if they measured gender equity or discrimination outcomes, and were published in English in peer-reviewed journals. Papers on violence against women and sexuality were not eligible. Seventy-eight papers reporting qualitative (n = 36), quantitative (n = 23), and multi-methods (n = 19) research projects met the eligibility criteria after screening 7,832 citations identified from psycINFO, ProQuest, Scopus searches, reference lists and expert recommendations. Findings were synthesised narratively. Improved gender inclusion was the most frequently reported change (n = 39), particularly for education and media interventions. Fifty percent of interventions measuring social change in gender equality did not achieve beneficial effects. Most gender mainstreaming interventions had only partial beneficial effects on outcomes, calling into question their efficacy in practice. Twenty-eight interventions used education and awareness-raising strategies, which also predominantly had only partial beneficial effects. Overall research quality was low to moderate, and the key findings created doubt that interventions to date have achieved meaningful change. Interventions may not have achieved macrolevel change because they did not explicitly address meso and micro change. We conclude with a summary of the evidence for key determinants of the promotion of gender equality, including a call to address men’s emotional responses (micro) in the process of achieving gender equality (micro/meso/macrolevels).

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Introduction

The adoption of CEDAW was a remarkable achievement in the history of the women’s movement. Its ultimate aim was to catalyse social transformation that transcends cursory legislative reform (Facio & Morgan, 2009 ). Article 3 of CEDAW promotes this social transformation, calling for state parties to ‘take all appropriate measures’ to achieve gender equality. In practice this has included, but has not been limited to, gender-blind strategies, awareness raising, litigation, international advocacy, art and social media activism, and gender mainstreaming (see Table 1 for definition).

The Global Gender Gap Index 2022 benchmarks 146 countries on the evolution of gender-based gaps in economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment (World Economic Forum, 2022 ). Although the Index measures gender parity (defined in Table 1 ) rather than substantive equality, it is a useful tool for analysing progression and regression. With scores depicting the distance to parity on a scale of zero to one hundred, the 2022 Report found the average distance completed to parity was 68 per cent. With the present trajectory, it will take 132 years to close the gender gap and 151 years to achieve equal economic participation and opportunity (World Economic Forum, 2022 ). Moreover, these estimates are predicted to worsen as the world faces crises in politics, economics, health, food, and the environment. Now more than ever we must assess our successes and failures in attempting to reduce gender inequality and discrimination.

The aim of this systematic review was to identify and synthesise evidence of the effectiveness of social justice interventions that sought to reduce gender inequality, gender bias, or discrimination against women and girls. Because recent systematic reviews have examined the effectiveness of interventions targeting violence against women and sexuality (e.g. Karakurt et al., 2019 ; Bourey et al., 2015 ; Yakubovich et al., 2018 ) we did not include these types of interventions. We were unable, however, to identify systematic reviews examining other interventions targeting gender equality. Therefore, this review focused on interventions that sought to achieve gender equality in any political, social, cultural or economic context, except violence against women and sexuality.

Theoretical Framework

The truism ‘context matters’ is pertinent to this systematic review. According to contextual social psychology, effects brought about at a microlevel are modified by the mesolevel and macrolevel, and vice versa (Pettigrew, 2021 ). In this review, microlevel variables include individual characteristics, including biology, beliefs, behaviours, values, and emotions, such as empathy and resentment. Mesolevel contextual factors include interpersonal interactions in family, work, and school etc. (e.g. gender segregation), and macrolevel context includes broader social and cultural norms, including religion and politics. Social norms in this context are “rules of action shared by people in a given society or group; they define what is considered normal and acceptable behaviour for the members of that group” (Cislaghi & Heise, 2020 , p. 409). In this sense, social norms exist within the mind, while gender norms exist outside it, and both are produced and reproduced through social interaction. In contextual social psychology, beliefs are embedded in institutions that affect our relational behaviours. While there are psychological causes of macrophenomena (Pettigrew, 2021 ), these phenomena (such as patriarchy) also influence individual affect. For example, affirmative action laws (macro) should increase contact between genders (meso), which in turn should reduce individual prejudice (micro). While this is a top down example, it also works from the bottom up, whereby micro behaviours can affect macrophenomena. In this context, prejudice against women and girls is a “multilevel syndrome” (Pettigrew, 2021 , p. 74).

“Systems thinking” also recognises the intersection between problems and processes from local to global levels (Arnold & Wade, 2015 ). Systems thinking is a complex interplay of a multitude of constantly evolving factors (Banerjee & Lowalekar, 2021 ). According to systems thinking, gender equality will be realised when interventions at the micro, meso and macrolevel are configured holistically, rather than individualistically. Interventions at any level need to consider and accommodate the role of processes and factors that may support or hinder the effectiveness of the intervention to yield population benefits. The different contextual levels that impact on gender inequality may be successfully tackled by feminist movements, but integrating the interventions pluralistically rather than monistically remains elusive as feminist movements appear to continue to work in silos. In undertaking strategies across different contexts, however, we are more likely to achieve substantive equality. But we need to address this complexity in the three contextual levels (micro, meso, macro) in order to predict, modify and eliminate discrimination against women and girls. These theoretical frameworks are used throughout this review to aid the synthesis of the evidence and identification of implications for practice.

Review Design

The Sample, Phenomena of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research type (SPIDER) tool was used to design the review (Cooke et al., 2012 ). SPIDER is appropriate for systematic reviews of quantitative, qualitative, and multi-methods research. We use the term multi method rather than mixed method because mixed method studies could be considered to have used multiple methods of data collection/analysis, but not all multi-methods studies follow “mixed methods” procedures as they do not always provide an integrated synthesis of findings across the methods used (Creswell, 2009 ). The search terms are documented in Supplementary Tables 1 and 2. The review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Page et al., 2021 ). Rapid review methods were used for citation screening and data extraction (Plüddemann et al., 2018 ). Papers were eligible according to the criteria defined below.

The sample could include people of any age, race, or gender in local, global, or transboundary intervention contexts. The phenomena of interest included any social justice, cognitive or behaviour-change interventions that sought to reduce gender inequality, gender bias, or discrimination against women, with any mode of delivery and duration. Interventions could be any type of program (e.g. behaviour change), policy (e.g. gender mainstreaming), process (e.g. awareness raising) or experimental condition that aimed to influence gender-focused outcomes. An intervention was categorised as achieving its aim (e.g., having a beneficial effect on gender equality or reducing discrimination), partially achieving its aim, not achieving its aim according to the assessment in the paper (i.e. if the analyses in the respective paper found that the intervention did not work), or having a harmful effect (i.e. resulting in increased discrimination or inequality).

The intervention being investigated could have been administered by any party, including expert advocates, government or non-government organisations (NGOs), social justice enterprises, or academic researchers. The research design did not need to include a comparator or control group, but must have incorporated a between-groups or pre-post comparison, or retrospective assessment of the impact, feasibility or acceptability of the intervention or program. The primary outcome for evaluation was any measure of actual or perceived level of, or change in, gender (in)equality, gender bias, or discrimination against women or girls. Secondary outcomes were the perceived level of inclusion, solidarity, awareness, empowerment, or equity. The research methods could include qualitative, quantitative, and mixed- or multi-methods. Eligible papers were published in peer-reviewed journals in English from 1990 to 2022. Whilst CEDAW was adopted in 1979, this timeframe was selected to ensure contemporaneity. A protocol for the review was developed a priori, but not registered.

Search Strategy and Eligibility Screening

As this was a review of research across multiple disciplines, three databases were used: Scopus, ProQuest, and psycINFO, in addition to reviewing reference lists and recommendations by experts. Search terms were adapted to each database. After screening the first search results it was evident that the terms were not broad enough, so a second search including additional terms was undertaken (see Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 for terms of both search strategies). All search results were uploaded to Covidence for eligibility screening and duplicate removal by reviewer one. Using Abstrackr, a second author screened a minimum of 10 percent of citations, consistent with rapid review methods (Plüddemann et al., 2018 ), or until < 50 percent of citations were predicted to be relevant. Abstrackr is a machine-learning program that generates predictions of the likely relevance of records based on judgements made by the reviewer (Wallace et al., 2012 ), which has been found to have excellent sensitivity and to generate significant workload savings (Giummarra et al., 2020 ). After titles and abstracts were screened, full text articles were assessed against the eligibility criteria, noting reasons for exclusion. Both reviewers met to discuss any conflicts; if consensus could not be reached a third author was consulted. The authors included experts in gender equality who provided significant input into the search strategy, identification of relevant literature, and synthesis.

Quality Assessment

The quality of research was assessed by the first author using a standard method (Kmet et al., 2004 ) with the added criterion of whether papers reported approval by a formally constituted human research ethics committee. Supplementary Tables 3–5 specify the quality criteria. Overall quality was classified as poor (studies meeting < 0.50 criteria), adequate (0.50–0.69), good (0.70–0.80), or strong (> 0.80) consistent with previous studies (Parsons et al., 2017 ).

Data Extraction and Synthesis

Data were extracted in three categories: The authors and publication year of the paper ; research aims, theoretical approach, methods, sample size, eligibility criteria, and sample characteristics; and, the intervention , aim, type, sector, geographic region, description, duration, targeted outcomes, effects, and short- and long-term impacts. Figures to summarise the proportion of studies from different geographic regions were generated using www.sankeymatic.com/build/ . Ten percent of the full-text articles were randomly selected, stratified by research method, for independent data extraction by a second author, consistent with rapid review methods (Plüddemann et al., 2018 ). The data extracted from both reviewers was cross-checked for accuracy and completeness. Sources of heterogeneity were noted, particularly variation in study samples, settings, contexts and intervention designs or aims. Given the heterogeneity of the interventions and the research, meta-analysis and meta-synthesis were not appropriate. Therefore, the findings were thematically synthesised according to intervention sector (e.g. education, employment etc.) and context (i.e., micro, meso and macro levels).

A total of 7,832 records were screened for eligibility with the last search conducted on 18 July 2022 (Fig.  1 ). Seventy-eight papers, each reporting a single intervention and using qualitative (n = 36), multi (19), or quantitative (23) methods, met the inclusion criteria. The characteristics of qualitative, quantitative, and multi-methods studies are summarised in Supplementary Tables 6, 7, and 8, respectively. The intervention effects for each study are summarised in Supplementary Tables 9 and 10.

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis Protocol (PRISMA) Flow Diagram

Five interventions were at the microlevel, 37 were at the mesolevel, and 17 were at the macrolevel. The final 19 interventions straddled micro-meso, meso-macro, or micro–macro. No intervention covered all three levels or took a systems thinking approach.

The overall quality of each paper is detailed in Supplementary Tables 6–8, and ratings for each quality domain are in Supplementary Tables 3–5. Studies using quantitative methods (range 0.58–1.00; median = 0.92, Q1 = 0.82, Q3 = 1.00) had significantly higher quality than qualitative (range 0.41–0.91; median = 0.73, Q1 = 0.67, Q3 = 0.79; χ2(1) = 13.71, p  < 0.001) and multi-method studies (range 0.48–0.94; median = 0.76, Q1 = 0.63, Q3 = 0.82; χ2(1) = 21.96, p  < 0.001). There was no difference in the quality of qualitative and multi-methods studies ( p  = 0.97).

All quantitative studies articulated the research question and reported the results adequately. Randomisation and blinding were used in most studies. While estimates of variance and controlling for confounding were not consistently reported, 18 studies using quantitative methods were considered to be strong quality, and seven had a perfect score.

In reports of qualitative studies, the study design, context, and conclusion were generally addressed well. However, only six studies used verification processes (see Table 1 for definition). No qualitative study received a perfect score; 20 studies were considered to be good quality.

For multi-method studies, the objective, context, data collection, analysis, and conclusion were generally reported well. Blinding was not applicable, and estimates of variance and control of confounding were generally not reported. No multi-method study received a perfect score although the quality of six of multi-methods papers was assessed as good.

Corresponding authors were contacted to confirm ethics approval; authors of two papers confirmed that the study did not receive ethics approval, and authors from 16 studies did not respond or confirm whether they had ethics approval. The omission of evidence of ethical approval is concerning and should be addressed in all future research with humans. The 18 studies with respect to which we either could not confirm ethics approval or did not receive ethics approval were all published in highly ranked journals. Furthermore, it was not, in general, clear in the majority of papers which agency or organisation conducted the intervention or undertook the study (e.g. government agency, NGO, academic researchers) making it difficult to assess reflexivity, and the prospect of future implementation.

Included Interventions

Intervention sectors.

Interventions were implemented and evaluated in various sectors: education (26 interventions); politics (10); employment (8); information, communications, and technology (6); legal (5); economics (6); health (3); sustainable development and land rights (3); sport (3); and women’s and girls’ rights (2). Interventions in the areas of conflict and of water, sanitation, and hygiene were reported in one paper each.

Intervention Settings

Interventions were set evenly throughout the Global South (35 papers) and the Global North (39 papers). Interventions were evaluated in Africa (15), Europe (12), North America (19), Asia (10), Latin America (6), the Middle East and North Africa (4), the United Kingdom (6), and the Pacific (4). Just under half of the Global South interventions were conducted in rural settings (16/35), whereas Global North interventions tended to be urban (22/39) (Fig.  2 ).

Settings for interventions in Global North and South Countries

Research Participant Characteristics

Twenty-seven interventions included both women and men as participants, 30 included only women, and one intervention included only men. Thirteen studies did not report the gender of the sample, and in seven studies gender of the sample or population was not applicable (e.g. intervention sought to affect a broad population approach irrespective of gender, such as a new law that applied to the whole population in order to improve gender equality, or a collective political party that sought to influence gender issues in parliament). Thirty papers did not report other participant demographic characteristics. Where sample characteristics were reported, participants were 10–80 years of age, with education level ranging from none to post-graduate.

Study Characteristics

All papers but one (Devasia, 1998 ) were published after 2005. Most papers reported data gathered across years, with twelve interventions taking place over hours or weeks. The timeframe did not appear to be associated with whether or not the intervention had a significant beneficial effect on the aims of the intervention. For example, McGregor and Davies’ ( 2019 ) two year study of the effects of a pay equity campaign achieved its aim (legislation was enacted), but Hayhurst’s ( 2014 ) girls’ entrepreneurship study that ran for several years had harmful effects (girls income was taken by men). Similarly, Zawadzki et al., ( 2012 ) board game intervention that takes 60–90 min achieved its aims but Krishnan et al. ( 2014 ) conditional cash transfer study over a month had no effect on social change.

In the qualitative and multi-method studies, theoretical frameworks were rarely reported. The few papers that did report theoretical frameworks used feminist standpoint theory, post-structuralist feminist theory, or social constructivist theory. Qualitative data collection methods were diverse: interviews (41 studies), focus groups (19), document analysis (18), observations (15), case studies (2), and visual techniques (e.g. PhotoVoice) (2). Quantitative and multi-method studies predominantly used surveys and questionnaires (22), with one study each using of the following tools: Gender Equitable Men’s Scale (Gottert et al., 2016 ), the Knowledge of Gender Equity Scale, the Empathy Questionnaire (Spreng et al., 2009 ), the Feminist Identity Scale (Rickard, 1989 ), and the Gender Related System Justification scale (Jost & Kay, 2003 ).

Few interventions aimed to achieve gender equality per se. Rather, they aimed to achieve components of gender equality (see Table 1 for definition), which ranged from gender neutrality through to striving towards a feminist revolution. Overall aims included greater awareness, inclusion, empowerment, parity, equity, and substantive equality (Supplementary Tables 6–8, column 3). The evaluation of whether interventions achieved their aims was usually assessed through surveying participants. The most common aim was to enhance “empowerment” (n = 18), which was generally not clearly defined. The interventions had various levels of effectiveness, with 37 studies having a significant beneficial effect on the aim of the intervention (i.e., they achieved their aims); 31 having a partial beneficial impact on the aim of the intervention; four studies having no beneficial or harmful impact on the aim of the intervention; and six studies having a harmful effect on the aim of the intervention (e.g., the intervention led to increased discrimination, inequality, or abuse). Examples of harmful effects include the ‘Girl Effect’ program in Uganda which resulted in participants being abused or robbed of the money they had earned (Hayhurst, 2014 ), and a girls’ resiliency program in the USA that resulted in increased abuse from male peers (Brinkman et al., 2011 ).

Intervention Design and Effectiveness by Sector

Education and training interventions.

Evaluations of education and training interventions were reported in 18 papers (6 qualitative, 6 quantitative, 6 multi-methods). Education interventions covered a range contexts (3 micro-meso, 11 meso, 3 meso-macro, 1 macro). Most interventions (14) used awareness-raising workshops targeting individual change, and reported only partially achieving the aim of the interventions. Five workshops were assessed in randomised controlled trials. Two qualitative studies targeted increasing girls’ enrolment in formal education in Morocco (Eger et al., 2018 ) and India (Jain & Singh, 2017 ), both of which achieved the aims of the interventions. One qualitative study in the Democratic Republic of Congo targeted behaviour change in men only (Pierotti et al., 2018 ), which had a partial beneficial effect because men increased their willingness to contribute to household chores but maintained control over the broader gender system. This intervention was an eight-week long mesolevel men’s discussion group focused on “undoing gender” through social interaction (e.g. promoting a more equal division of labour in the household, improving intra-household relationship quality, and questioning existing gender norms).

Gender parity in schools did not signal an end to, or transformation of, gender inequities in the schools or communities studied (Ralfe, 2009 ). To bring about education policy reform, Palmén et al. ( 2020 ) found that top-down institutional commitment to gender equality was essential to create change. However, bottom-up strategies were also needed as teachers had to foster cooperative learning that encouraged working together and valuing different abilities across genders (Sánchez-Hernández et al., 2018 ). Sufficient resources, in addition to monitoring and evaluation of education initiatives, were found to be a key to intervention success (Palmén et al., 2020 ). Ultimately, social norms did not change beyond the school environment (Chisamya et al., 2012 ; Jain & Singh, 2017 ).

While interventions in traditional education contexts only partially achieved their aims, experiential learning was found to be a powerful process to deliver knowledge about gender equity in a nonthreatening way (Zawadzki et al., 2012a ). Zawadzki’s study was a mesolevel intervention that used a board game to teach participants the cumulative effect of subtle, nonconscious bias, to discuss how bias hinders women’s promotion in the workplace, and to find solutions for what can be done to reduce that bias. They found that the delivery of information was less effective when new knowledge did not promote self-efficacy or lead participants to resist perceived attempts to influence their beliefs or behaviours. Furthermore, they established that learning about gender inequity was not sufficient for knowledge retention. Rather, participants had to link the knowledge to their own experiences and be empowered to feel that they could act on that knowledge.

Awareness-raising interventions in education and training generally only partially achieved the aims of the interventions, and did not necessarily translate into behaviour change (Ralfe, 2009 ). In the strong quality (0.93) quantitative mesolevel study by Moss-Racusin et al. ( 2018 ), the Video Interventions for Diversity in STEM (VIDS) intervention was found to achieve significantly greater awareness of bias in participants compared to the non-intervention control condition; however, effects on behaviour were not assessed. This intervention presented participants with short videos about findings from gender bias research in one of three conditions. One condition illustrated findings using narratives (compelling stories), the second presented the same results using expert interviews (straightforward facts), and a hybrid condition included both narrative and expert interview videos.

A lack of awareness, knowledge, or understanding of women’s human rights was found to be a key barrier to the achievement of gender equality in education-based interventions (Murphy-Graham, 2009 ). Gervais ( 2010 ) reported that awareness-raising can have direct effects on participants by giving them confidence to speak up against violations of their rights, although they noted that this might anger violators. Similarly, education was found in some cases to enable women to negotiate power-sharing with their husbands, while other women were verbally abused and threatened because their husbands disapproved of the education program (Murphy-Graham, 2009 ). Similar to the study by Pierotti et al. ( 2018 ), Murphy-Graham ( 2009 ) sought to “undo gender” by encouraging students to rethink gender relations in their everyday lives (mesolevel). Including men together with women in education programs enabled women to gauge men’s reactions to social change in a safe environment (Cislaghi et al., 2019 ). Potential harmful effects of interventions are further summarised under the ‘The problem of hostile affect’ header below.

STEM Education

Among education interventions were a subset of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) education interventions. These specifically targeted secondary school girls as a pathway to tertiary STEM education, and were reported in eight papers (1 qualitative, 3 quantitative, 4 multi methods). The design of interventions varied from science clubs, outreach programs, after school sessions, residential camps and immersion days. Archer et al. ( 2014 ), however, took a multipronged approach. Their intervention included school excursions, visits from STEM Ambassadors and a researcher-in-residence, a STEM ‘speed networking’ event, and participation in a series of teacher-led sessions for girls aged 13–14 years. Despite this significant investment, the intervention did not significantly change students’ aspirations of studying science, although it did appear to have a beneficial effect on broadening students’ understanding of the range of science jobs.

All STEM education interventions were aimed at the mesolevel and were located in the urban Global North. While the long-term impact (e.g. increased enrolment of women into tertiary STEM education) were inconsistent among studies. Gorbacheva et al. ( 2014 ) found that secondary same-sex education had no influence on this objective. Alternatively, Hughes et al. ( 2013 ) found having role models was more critical than sex segregation. Finally, Lackey et al. ( 2007 ), Lang et al. ( 2015 ) and Watermeyer ( 2012 ) all established that a network of support (e.g. family, school, industry) made a positive difference to girls equality in STEM education.

Employment Interventions

Eight interventions focused on women’s employment: 4 qualitative, 2 quantitative, 2 multi-methods studies. They covered a range of contexts (1 micro/meso, 5 meso, 2 meso/macro). Three interventions addressed women’s promotion (Eriksson‐Zetterquist & Styhre, 2008 ; Grada et al., 2015 ; Smith et al., 2015 ). Two interventions evaluated microenterprise; one produced harmful effects (Hayhurst, 2014 ), and the other only partially achieved its aim (Strier, 2010 ). Hayhurst ( 2014 ) evaluated an intervention auspiced by the Nike Foundation and concluded that it had an unfair and deleterious effect by placing the burden of social change on girls. In this intervention, focusing on the mesolevel, girls were taught to be entrepreneurs to enable them to escape abuse, buy land, grow food, and work. In practice, this economic empowerment strategy led to increased abuse by men who wanted to take the girls’ money to pay their own taxes and fines. This study was good quality (0.73). Participants in the study by Strier ( 2010 ) thought that microenterprise promised self-realisation and escape from the slavery of the labour market, but they found it to be a false promise, characterising the informal sector as both a disappointment and a fraud. Overall, employment interventions led to unreliable and inconsistent outcomes.

Economic Interventions

Six interventions (1 qualitative, 2 quantitative, 3 multi-methods studies) addressed various contexts (1 micro, 1 micro/macro, 2 meso/macro, 2 macro interventions) that targeted economic empowerment. Overall, the interventions partially achieved their aims. For microfinance interventions, women benefited less than men because they were given smaller loans for less lucrative businesses (Haase, 2012 ). Krishnan et al. ( 2014 ) conducted a good quality (0.79) multi-method study of a micro–macro level intervention that provided conditional cash transfers in India, and found minimal positive effects from the implementation of this scheme to address social behaviours related to valuing girls. In this study, parents had to register the birth of their daughter in order to receive financial benefit, but this did not transform the social mindset that daughters are a burden. In another study, the size and frequency of cash transfers directly influenced outcomes: large but infrequent payments enabled investment that could facilitate economic transformation (Morton, 2019 ). Lump-sum payments also challenged stereotypes about what women could invest in, and could transform the gender asset gap. Institution of a social protection floor (e.g. welfare benefits) enhanced women’s power and control over household decision-making in financial matters and household spending in South Africa (Patel et al., 2013 ). While a social protection floor had benefits for women’s empowerment at the microlevel, it did not transform unequal and unjust gendered social relations of power at the macrolevel.

Legal Interventions

Five interventions (3 qualitative, 2 quantitative studies) in two contexts (1 meso/macro, 4 macro) reported on legal interventions. In Zartaloudis’s ( 2015 ) qualitative macrolevel study of an employment strategy in Greece and Portugal, legislation was found to have an important but not transformative effect on gender equality in employment. Three other studies found that changes in law must be accompanied by incentives and penalties in order to be effective (Kim & Kang, 2016 ; Palmén et al., 2020 ; Singh & Peng, 2010 ). While the decline in levels of discrimination was at first sharp after enacting anti-discrimination legislation, its implementation plateaued over time, calling into question the long-term sustainable effects of law reform without adequate enforcement mechanisms. In this macrolevel study by Singh and Peng ( 2010 ), the Ontario Pay Equity Act was effective because it was proactive in persuing pay equity, rather than being complaint based.

Legal opportunity and litigation were strategic choices in campaign strategies in one study, playing an important role in effecting change to prevent discriminatory pay for work typically performed by women (McGregor & Davies, 2019 ). The strong quality (0.92) macrolevel study by Mueller et al. ( 2019 ) increased access to legal services in order to improve legal knowledge in rural Tanzania. It found that, despite increased access to legal services, women still had moderate to low knowledge of marital laws, and only 2.7 percent of women would refer someone to a paralegal for problems with a widow’s assets, divorce, or marital disputes. Mueller et al. ( 2019 ) concluded that an increased investment in access to justice needed to be made through informal channels (mesolevel change) in addition to the macrolevel law reform.

Political Interventions

Ten papers (4 qualitative, 3 quantitative, 3 multi-methods studies) that covered a variety of contexts (1 micro/meso, 2 meso, 2 meso/macro, 5 macro) reported assessments of political interventions. Electing women to council increased other women’s access to councillors because women had greater heterosocial networks (i.e., comprising women and men), but did not affect men’s access to councillors (Benstead, 2019 ; Levy & Sakaiya, 2020 ). However, increasing the number of women in public office did not necessarily improve equality (McLean & Maalsen, 2017 ). For example, an evaluation of gendered outcomes of Hon. Julia Gillard’s tenure as Prime Minister of Australia saw increased gender-based denigration and vilification of her leadership (McLean & Maalsen, 2017 ).

A qualitative macro study using interviews and ethnography to explore the impact of political gender quotas in Mali (Johnson, 2019 ) found that savings groups, together with political gender quotas, were important for catalysing the first steps towards social and political transformation. In Mali, gender quota laws required political parties to field a minimum of 30 percent women candidates, and to include a woman within the first three places on a party’s candidate list. In this context, savings and credit associations developed women’s self-efficacy and increased their confidence to become political candidates (Johnson, 2019 ).

An example of discursive change based on political activism was found by Cowell-Meyers’ ( 2017 ) multi-method study examining the impact of a new feminist political party in Sweden. Near consensus by political parties that gender equality needed to be tackled through government intervention was achieved through the efforts of the small women’s rights party. However, another multi-method mesolevel study examining the effects of Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) in Europe found that they either ignored or subverted gender mainstreaming language (S. Lang, 2009 ). Gender mainstreaming policy interventions were found to have only partially achieved their aims, but were successful when law and policy detailed specific roles and responsibilities for action (Kim & Kang, 2016 ). Policymakers in two other studies were found to avoid the responsibility of implementation not because they opposed gender mainstreaming itself, but because they objected to being forced into it (Hwang & Wu, 2019 ; Kim & Kang, 2016 ). Therefore, the attitude of bureaucrats (microlevel) was considered to be an important factor in implementing gender equality initiatives at the macrolevel.

The strong (perfect quality score) quantitative study by Saguy and Szekeres ( 2018 ) reported on the effect on gender-based attitudes (microlevel) following exposure to the 2017 Women’s March across the US and worldwide in response to Donald Trump’s inauguration. The research found that large-scale collective action had a polarising effect on those exposed to it. Over time, men who identified more closely with their own gender increased the degree to which they justified gender inequality after exposure to the protests, suggesting a backlash reaction (mesolevel). People who were found to be positively affected by collective action were already in favour of the protesters’ cause. The backlash found for high-identifying men was explained by reactance theory (Brehm, 1966 ) whereby people become motivationally aroused by a threat to or elimination of a behavioral freedom (Brehm, 1989 ).

Barriers to Achieving Gender Equality: The Problem of Hostile Affect

No study accounted for men’s and boys’ emotions (microlevel change) as part of the aim and design of the intervention, but their significance became apparent in the results of several studies. Men and boys reported feeling hostility, resentment, fear and jealousy when social norms were challenged. Attempts at addressing gender inequality were found to threaten men’s sense of entitlement, and it was theorised that boys expected to be the centre of attention (Brinkman et al., 2011 ). In the meso study by MacPhail et al. ( 2019 ) that evaluated a men’s participation program in South Africa, participants reported equality as a zero-sum game that meant respecting women equated to disrespecting men. In that intervention, activities included intensive small group workshops, informal community dialogue through home visits, mural painting to stimulate discussions of key messages, informal theatre, soccer tournaments, and film screenings. In another study, women’s oppression was maintained by men because they feared losing control of ‘their’ women (Devasia, 1998 ). In several studies, men shared their fear of being perceived as weak or feminine in front of their peers or community (Bigler et al., 2019 ; McCarthy & Moon, 2018 ; Murphy-Graham, 2009 ; Pierotti et al., 2018 ; Singhal & Rattine-Flaherty, 2006 ). Male participants in the study by Pierotti et al. ( 2018 ) believed that allowing women to be leaders in households would disintegrate society. They believed that upholding men’s lack of accountability and position as ‘boss’ was important to maintaining the fabric of society.

In contrast, Cislaghi ( 2018 ) found that men in Senegal did not resist increased political participation of women. And a radio program in Afghanistan that addressed gender equality was found not to offend men’s cultural or religious beliefs, and ultimately succeeded in changing attitudes and behaviours towards women and girls (Sengupta et al., 2007 ). The outcome included changes in the community, such as giving permission to women to leave their home alone, to vote, to go to school, and to reject child marriage. While participants expressed increased empowerment (micro), they also acknowledged that they may have their rights, but can never make decisions pertaining to their rights (Sengupta et al., 2007 ). For example, women may have the right to vote (macro), but they cannot go to vote or decide who to vote for without male guardianship (meso). In that study, 15 h of civic education material was promoted by radio, focusing on peace, democracy, and women’s rights. At the community level, interviews and focus groups with participants revealed that there was no resistance to listening to the radio program from men or families. However, the Sengupta et al. study was not longitudinal and had a relatively small sample of 115 people (72.2% women), and the women in the study may not have been in a position that allowed them to admonish the men in their community.

It was found in one study that resistance and backlash can be ameliorated by including men and boys in the development and delivery of interventions (Sengupta et al., 2007 ). Behaviour change in men required an increase in empathy to achieve the aim of gender equality (Becker & Swim, 2011 ). Hadjipavlou ( 2006 ) and Vachhani and Pullen (2019) found that empathy was a viable alternative feminist strategy. In their qualitative study, Hwang and Wu ( 2019 ) in Taiwan found that trust-building between civil servants and advocates reduced resistance and hostility. Activists in this intervention used four strategies: (1) Giving praise and encouragement instead of criticism and blame; (2) Engaging civil servants on a personal level to create bonding; (3) Appeasing fears about being blamed by offering assistance; (4) Attempting to invoke their identification with the values of gender mainstreaming through informal educational efforts, all of which are mesolevel strategies.

Promoting Social Change to Reduce Gender Inequality

There was a wide array of types of change in different aspects of gender equality, with interventions varying in their success across settings and contexts. Table 2 summarises the types of change (e.g. legal, financial, behaviour, social) and the context (i.e., micro, meso, macro) that were identified and whether interventions aims were fully or partially achieved, or were not achieved, or had a harmful effect. Physical change, such as increased physical presence of women through inclusion or solidarity (meso) was the most consistently achieved beneficial outcome. Interventions targeting macrolevel social change, however, predominantly failed to achieve their aims or had harmful effects, reflecting how hard it is to realise social change, especially from a single, usually localised, intervention. Quotas could perhaps achieve their aim, although this finding was derived mostly from one good quality study (Johnson, 2019 ). The largest group of interventions were those implemented in education-based contexts, but these generally only partially achieved their aims, and focused mostly on physical changes (e.g., inclusion, solidarity). Most gender mainstreaming interventions did not achieved their aims.

Altogether, the findings confirm that social transformation is not automatic, easy, nor necessarily sustainable (Murphy-Graham, 2009 ). Furthermore, economic transformation is constrained if it is not supported by concurrent social transformation (Haase, 2012 ). One researcher, reporting a good quality meso-macro multi-method educational study in rural Bangladesh, claimed to have achieved social transformation (Sperandio, 2011 ). The appointment of women into roles that are traditionally occupied by men (in this case, teaching) led to widespread acceptance and normalisation of women in other non-traditional roles in a conservative village. Because the researcher did not interview or survey members of the community in which the intervention was evaluated, it is not clear whether broader social change was achieved.

It was found in several studies that dialogue was key to creating change in gender norms (Hwang & Wu, 2019 ; MacPhail et al., 2019 ; McGregor & Davies, 2019 ; Murphy-Graham, 2009 ; Sánchez-Hernández et al., 2018 ). However, Matich et al.’s ( 2019 ) qualitative study of the #freethenipple campaign and Boling’s ( 2020 ) study of the #ShePersisted campaign found that small steps bring about only small changes. For instance, in the #freethenipple campaign, women took control of how they were represented (microlevel) in order to challenge patriarchal gender norms (macrolevel). The authors noted that, despite good intentions, a hashtag cannot erase stereotyping. Pierotti et al. ( 2018 ) also found that small changes (micro) in quotidian tasks (e.g., participation in household chores) did not lead to substantive social change (macrolevel change). That is, while changes in tasks occurred with relative ease, social transformation through the cumulative effect of small steps towards egalitarianism did not occur.

In comparison, the qualitative study by McCarthy and Moon ( 2018 ) examined a women’s program in Ghana and found that changing everyday practices did matter, but becoming cognisant of the need for revolution led people to become overwhelmed and immune to change efforts. The researchers found that a key challenge in achieving social transformation was the need to bring about changes in daily interactions. For instance, one participant stated that if a person is not empowered at home, no matter how much money you give them, they are going to need more (McCarthy & Moon, 2018 ).

All genders need to participate to achieve a re-socialisation (Brinkman et al., 2011 ). Sengupta et al. ( 2007 ) concluded that their radio program would have alienated men if it had targeted only women. By including all genders, potential resistance to change can be neutralised (Devasia, 1998 ). In summary, social transformation is possible, but transformation is not likely to be universal or successful across all contexts (Sánchez-Hernández et al., 2018 ), particularly from any single monistic intervention. Holistic responses that take account of system thinking may create the change needed.

Overall, despite concerted effort, it seems that in the past thirty years we have not uncovered the keys to social change in order to enhance gender equality and non-discrimination against girls and women. Perhaps the reviewed interventions did not achieve macrolevel change because they did not simultaneously and explicitly address meso and micro change. Whilst CEDAW seeks the ‘elimination of all forms of discrimination’, achievement of that aim is far from complete, although it is not surprising that no single intervention could catalyse social change that achieves CEDAW’s objective. This review demonstrates that it will take time and a variety of endeavours to achieve gender equality.

To summarise the substantive lessons from this systematic review, we offer the following distillation as a summary of the findings to date. This distillation includes definitive statements that should be viewed only in the context of this review and may not generalise across all efforts towards gender equality in all societies.

What is Ineffective in Promoting Gender Equality

Small changes do not lead to big changes. Small concessions are granted to maintain peace, while big changes are often denied to maintain power.

Men and boys can feel the micro effects of fear, hostility, resentment, and jealousy when meso-macro gendered social norms are challenged.

Increased confidence, agency, empowerment, or individual leadership (micro) is not sufficient to promote the structural changes required to increase gender equality (macro).

A lack of change in mindsets (micro) and poor enforcement can mean that laws (macro) are not realised or have little effect at the community level (meso).

The overall focus on women ignores the real problem, and the need to engage with all members of society.

Education and awareness-raising may establish the right to education but do not necessarily create gender equality.

Raising awareness alone does not translate into behaviour change (meso to micro).

Transnational advocacy networks are not effective.

Protests in western democracies can have a polarising and backlash effect.

Gender mainstreaming efforts generally fail to achieve positive outcomes.

Economic transformation does not automatically lead to social transformation.

What is Effective in Promoting Gender Equality

Eliciting positive affect in interventions garners positive outcomes.

Empathy is a viable feminist strategy, although evidence is limited.

All genders need to participate in re-socialisation of gender norms.

Dialogue is a key to success.

A large number of women must behave differently for new behaviours to be accepted (micro to meso).

Experiential learning is a powerful way to embed knowledge about gender equity in a nonthreatening, lasting way.

Investment in access to justice must include informal channels of the justice system.

Social transformation can be achieved in households through daily interactions (meso to macro).

Enabling environments (macro) are more effective than individual empowerment (micro), but should include top-down and bottom-up approaches.

Quotas are effective.

Laws must be proactive as well as reactive or complaint based.

The contextual levels of analysis developed by Pettigrew ( 2021 ) has also been adapted from these lists into Fig. 3 . These distillations challenge our thinking about how to achieve gender equality and therefore require greater discussion amongst feminist activists, advocates, and the general population for ecological validation. The key findings of this review have implications for policy and practice because they call into question the type of change sought by feminist movements, the type of intervention used to achieve that change, and whether that intervention is likely to be effective in practice. Overall, this review gives pause for thought. We hope it will inform future decisions about how to achieve gender equality.

Contextual levels of analysis for this review, adapted from Pettigrew ( 2021 )

Strengths and Limitations

Our broad inclusion criteria identified relevant interventions across a range of political, economic, social and cultural contexts, published over a thirty year period. Consistent with the recommendations by Garritty et al. ( 2021 ) we used rapid review methods; this may have led to the omission of some eligible studies. However, the use of a machine learning approach by reviewer two to rapidly screen a sample of the records predicted to be most relevant helped to limit the omission of relevant studies. Moreover, our restriction of literature to 1990 onwards may have omitted some studies conducted since the adoption of CEDAW in 1979. Given that only one study was published from 1990–2000, however, it is unlikely that this restricted timeframe had a significant impact on the review. Excluding papers not published in English is a limitation, and may have led to the omission of studies in some settings. We urge those who have non-peer-reviewed evaluations to submit them to peer-reviewed journals for future inclusion in reviews like the present one. The results of the large number of studies included in the review are difficult to generalise given the heterogenous study methods, intervention designs, populations, and settings. Because of a lack of reflexivity in most qualitative and multi-method studies, it is impossible to discern (for example) whether research undertaken in the Global South was conducted by Global North researchers. Moreover, there was no evidence of the ethical conduct of 16 studies and two studies did not have ethics approval. Together, these limitations may indicate potential problems with informed consent and implicit racial or other biases, although none were explicitly identifiable. There was insufficient evidence to assess whether and how culture played a part in attempts to achieve gender equality. Furthermore, while 86 percent of interventions predominantly or partially achieved their aims, this may inflate the effectiveness of such interventions because of reporting biases that favour publication of positive results (Sengupta et al., 2007 ; Sperandio, 2011 ).

This review has taken stock of successes and failures in seeking to promote gender equality. The findings reveal that undue reliance has been placed on the presumed efficacy of awareness raising, and that the race to achieve gender parity has not yet catalysed the desired social transformation. Entrepreneur programs can be exploitative, and legal actions have had limited effects, potentially failing because of men’s feelings about change. This review has shown that men can be fearful, resentful, jealous, and angry towards acts that disrupt the status quo . Until we adequately address these emotions and biases, the change that women (and potentially all genders) want, and the equality we all need will not be realised. Social context and systems thinking have shown us the importance of holism when tackling systemic discrimination. In this context, to be fully human is to be emotionally fulfilled. Ergo , human rights will be realised when there is dignity, humanity and positive emotionality among genders. Only then is the promise of CEDAW likely to be fulfilled.

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124 Gender Inequality Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Gender inequality is a pervasive issue that continues to affect individuals around the world. From the workplace to the home, women and gender minorities often face discrimination and barriers that prevent them from reaching their full potential. If you are tasked with writing an essay on gender inequality, it can be helpful to have a list of topic ideas and examples to inspire your writing. Here are 124 gender inequality essay topic ideas and examples to get you started:

• The gender pay gap and its impact on women in the workforce
• Gender stereotypes and their influence on societal expectations
• The role of media in perpetuating gender inequality
• Gender discrimination in hiring practices
• The glass ceiling and its effect on women's career advancement
• Gender inequality in STEM fields
• The impact of gender inequality on mental health
• Gender-based violence and its prevalence in society
• The intersection of race and gender inequality
• The role of education in reducing gender inequality
• Gender inequality in politics and leadership positions
• The impact of gender inequality on economic development
• Women's reproductive rights and gender inequality
• Gender inequality in healthcare access and outcomes
• The role of religion in perpetuating gender inequality
• Gender inequality in sports and athletics
• The impact of gender inequality on LGBTQ+ individuals
• Gender inequality in the criminal justice system
• The role of masculinity in perpetuating gender inequality
• Gender inequality in the household division of labor
• The impact of colonialism on gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to technology
• The role of patriarchy in perpetuating gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to clean water and sanitation
• The impact of climate change on gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to education
• The role of social norms in perpetuating gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to financial services
• The impact of globalization on gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to reproductive healthcare
• The role of social media in perpetuating gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to property rights
• The impact of war and conflict on gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to transportation
• The role of intersectionality in understanding gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to political participation
• The impact of migration on gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to legal rights
• The role of the family in perpetuating gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to social services
• The impact of urbanization on gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to information and communication technologies
• The role of religion in challenging gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to land rights
• The impact of social movements on gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to healthcare services
• The role of media literacy in challenging gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to financial resources
• Gender inequality in access to employment opportunities
• The role of masculinities in challenging gender inequality
• Gender inequality in access to education and training
• Gender inequality in access to political representation
• The role of social media in challenging gender inequality
• The role of the family in challenging gender inequality

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• Published: 26 July 2024

Gender Inequality is negatively associated with academic achievement for both boys and girls

• Li Zhang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1045-245X 1 ,
• Baolige Chao 1 ,
• Yan Gao 1 ,
• Wenjing Wang 2 ,
• Yingzi Yuan 3 ,
• Chuangsheng Chen 4 &
• Ziqiang Xin   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9983-2322 5  

npj Science of Learning volume  9 , Article number:  49 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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To examine the role of inequality in academic achievement, we analyse a cross-national dataset including data from three cycles from 2012 to 2018 from the PISA, an international assessment of 15-year-old students’ math, reading, and science performance. The Gini coefficient and gender inequality index (GII) were used as metrics for a country’s economic inequality and gender inequality, respectively. The results show that gender inequality has a negative association with academic achievement for both boys and girls. Moreover, gender inequality has a stronger association with academic achievement than does economic inequality. We also find that gender inequality in reproductive health may contribute substantially to the association between gender inequality and academic achievement. Despite substantial advances in gender equality worldwide, multisectoral and multilevel approaches from the community to the country level are needed to ensure substantial long-term reductions in economic, gender, and educational inequalities.

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Introduction.

As a kind of potential human capital, academic achievement determines future employment, socioeconomic status, and financial stability and reflects an individual’s quality of life 1 , 2 . According to social-ecological theory 3 , individual differences in academic achievement can be partly attributed to socioeconomic contexts at the macrosystem level, which is characteristic of a given culture with particular reference to material resources, belief systems, customs, opportunity structures, and so on. However, compared with the abundant research on the relationship between family or school at the microsystem level and children’s academic achievement 4 , 5 , 6 , few educational studies have examined the relationship between economic context and children’s academic achievement. In these studies, economic development has been found to be positively associated with academic achievement 7 . Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), researchers reported that national foundational advancements, such as advancing to a higher income classification, are associated with significant increases in country-level PISA scores 7 .

Economic inequality, which refers to the concentration of wealth in fewer hands 8 , 9 , 10 , is associated with a range of negative social phenomena, including higher crime rates, lower social cohesion, and adverse physical and mental health outcomes 11 , 12 . To date, many studies have revealed a negative association between economic inequality and academic achievement 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 . For example, researchers analysed six cohorts of PISA scores from 2000 to 2015 and found that within-country economic inequality has a negative association with the academic achievement of students in that country 17 . A study analysing data from the 2006 PISA showed that more egalitarian countries (those with lower Gini coefficients) have greater average achievement, more very high-achieving students, and fewer very low-achieving students than less egalitarian countries 16 . One plausible explanation for the negative consequence of economic inequality comes from neo-materialist theory, which posits that the association between economic inequality and a range of social and psychological outcomes reflects adverse circumstances and insufficient resources for individuals 18 . Another plausible explanation comes from social psychology theories that propose that living in a highly unequal environment can intensify the sense of relative deprivation among low-income individuals, thereby leading to heightened anxiety and stress, which in turn may give rise to a series of negative outcomes 19 .

Gender inequality has also been found to be associated with academic achievement. Gender is not only a descriptive term of biological difference but also shapes social structures and relations in education, as does ethnicity and class 20 . Recently, gender has been shown to have unsettling features in comparative education 21 . Nevertheless, gender equality has typically been a desirable outcome in education 22 , and policy makers should consider interventions and outcomes through the lens of gender equality when developing education policies. Gender inequality refers to the unequal distribution of power, resources, and status among different gender groups, resulting in hierarchical power structures 23 . To date, this line of research has typically focused on the relationship between gender inequality and the gender gap in math achievement 24 , 25 . However, some findings do not support the idea that boys have an advantage over girls in mathematics 26 , 27 . For example, one study that analysed the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) identified some countries, mainly in the Middle East, as outliers with higher academic achievement by girls than boys 27 . One plausible explanation for this phenomenon could be that under the pressure of survival, girls tend to prefer mathematics-related careers with higher income returns, leading them to exert more effort and perform better in mathematics learning 28 . However, there is a growing consensus that gender differences in math performance are small or trivial in most countries 29 , 30 . These findings support the gender similarities hypothesis, which assumes that males and females are similar in most psychological variables 29 . Therefore, gender differences in academic achievement may not be as large as we think.

In line with this, two recent studies have shown that gender inequality is associated with academic achievement for both boys and girls 22 , 31 . Through the use of qualitative comparative analysis and correlational analyses, gender equality has been found to be the most relevant and consistent factor strongly associated with the 2015 PISA results in 49 countries for all children 22 . Another study reported that gender equality was consistently correlated with PISA scores at each time point from 2006 to 2018, and changes in gender equality were positively associated with changes in PISA scores for both boys and girls 31 .

However, these two studies have two noteworthy limitations. One limitation is that their analyses were performed at the country level, and it remains unknown whether their conclusions hold true based on analyses at the student level. Analyses at the country level do not account for the hierarchical structure of the data, and variance at the school level and at the student level may be masked. When results at the country level are used to draw inferences at the student level, it is possible for an ecological fallacy to occur 32 . For example, at the student level, a frequent finding is that self-concept is positively correlated with achievement in mathematics 33 . However, PISA has repeatedly reported that self-concept and achievement are negatively correlated at the country level 34 , 35 . Therefore, analyses at the country and student levels need to be combined. The other limitation of these studies is that the role of economic inequality is not explored when the role of gender inequality is examined. If gender inequality is separate from economic inequality, one cannot observe how they interconnect or overlap 36 . More importantly, given the abovementioned association between economic inequality and educational outcomes 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , it is important for researchers and policy makers to compare the roles of multiple types of inequality 31 . This approach can provide more accurate knowledge about the relationship between gender inequality and academic achievement.

Accordingly, the present study aimed to examine the relationship between inequality and academic achievement by making two improvements to previous research. First, we combined analyses at the country and student levels to confirm the robust relationship between gender inequality and academic achievement. Specifically, for our analyses, we used multilevel modelling (i.e., HLM), which is deemed to be a suitable analytic approach for PISA 37 . Moreover, machine learning techniques were used to compare the roles of multiple inequalities in academic achievement. By doing so, we pursued our first objective of investigating whether gender inequality is harmful to children’s academic achievement for both boys and girls. Based on previous findings, we hypothesize that there is a negative relationship between gender inequality and academic achievement and that this relationship is the same for boys and girls 22 , 31 . Although it was first proposed over 200 years ago that inequality between the sexes is detrimental for all, even to the sex it favours 38 , possible straightforward explanations for why gender equality is beneficial for educational results remain to be identified 31 . Conceivably, gender inequality may manifest in pervasive social practices within families, educational systems, peer relationships, mass media, and culture at large. All these practices socialize children to accept gender stereotypes about their academic capabilities and performance according to social cognitive learning theory 39 . Negative stereotypes can negatively affect the performance of disadvantaged adolescents through negative expectations 40 , 41 , and positive stereotypes can negatively affect their performance by causing them to choke under pressure 42 , 43 . Consequently, it is expected that there is a negative association between gender inequality and academic achievement for both boys and girls.

The second contribution of our study is that we account for economic inequality when examining the association between gender inequality and academic achievement. Accordingly, our second objective is to compare the associations between gender inequality and economic inequality with academic achievement. We hypothesize that academic achievement has a stronger association with gender inequality than with economic inequality. Like economic inequality, gender inequality is essentially an inequality of opportunity that is derived from structural circumstances beyond the scope of individual control and responsibility 44 . Thus, gender inequality and economic inequality are often found to be closely related 45 . In areas with higher economic inequality, women tend to have lower pay, social status and labour force participation than men 45 , 46 , 47 . However, gender inequality and economic inequality differ in several respects. Despite limited research on their differences, we present exploratory speculation based on social capital theory 48 , which is derived from the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu 49 . Specifically, from the perspective of individual development, economic inequality can be conceived as physical capital that can transform raw material into something profitable 50 . However, since gender is a social and cultural construct enacted through social cognitive processes that are embedded within social interactions and societal institutions 51 , gender inequality can be conceived as social capital that involves institutions, relationships, attitudes, and values that govern interactions among people 48 . Physical capital is embodied in observable materials and is wholly tangible, whereas social capital exists in the relations between persons and is thus less tangible 50 . More importantly, unlike physical capital, social capital accumulates through a myriad of repeated and varied interactions, both formal and informal; thus, it is conserved and increased through use 52 . In this sense, social capital may be more deeply rooted and may be a profound factor affecting academic achievement 53 . In a recent study using panel data from 103 countries from 2006 to 2013, a negative effect of gender equality on income inequality was found, implying the profound role of gender inequality 47 . Thus, it is expected that gender inequality, as social capital, has a greater association with academic achievement than does physical capital.

To this end, PISA scores and the Gender Inequality Index (GII) were used in this study to index academic achievement and gender inequality, respectively. The PISA is a triannual international assessment of the reading, mathematics, and science literacy and skills of 15-year-old students from numerous countries worldwide that was launched by the OECD in 1997 54 . Through the PISA, the OECD aims to provide valid, comparable, cross-national evidence of education outcomes to inform educational policy decisions 54 . However, some researchers claim that there are major technical flaws regarding the representativeness of the tests and students 55 . Critics argue that the PISA harms children and classrooms through its continuous cycle of testing and endangers the well-being of students and teachers through scripted lessons and less autonomy 56 . In pursuit of best practices in education, the PISA may cause decontextualized observations and analytical rather than empirical practice claims to be gathered 57 . There are also questions about whether the PISA is an institution-building force challenged by political and ideological neutrality 58 . Despite these concerns, the PISA has unique characteristics and advantages in terms of item construction, sampling procedures, and sample size 37 . Given that the GII was first published in 2010, we chose PISA data from 2010 onwards. Furthermore, we used PISA data from multiple years, namely, the 2012 PISA, the 2015 PISA, and the 2018 PISA data, to obtain reliable results.

The GII has been increasingly used in recent studies 59 , 60 . It is a composite index based on three dimensions: female reproductive health, gender empowerment and gender labour market status 61 . Since the GII has three dimensions, this study is well positioned to provide evidence regarding the domains of gender inequality with the strongest links with academic achievement. The GII is unique in that it focuses on critical issues of educational attainment, economic and political participation, and female-specific health –issues, specifically regarding female reproductive health 61 . Female reproductive health includes two indicators, maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth ratio, which both have vital implications for women, girls, and their children. One previous study showed that these indicators were strongly associated with children’s PISA scores in 2018 31 . Moreover, the United Nations Development Programme has reported that female reproductive health is the largest contributor to gender inequality worldwide 61 . Therefore, it is expected that female reproductive health has the strongest association with academic achievement.

Results 1: country-level analysis

The descriptive statistical results for the key variables are presented in Table 1 . All the statistical tests reported are two-sided. First, unconditional Pearson correlation analyses at the country level were conducted to explore whether the inequality captured by the current year Gini coefficient and the GII is associated with academic achievement across the three assessment cycles from 2012 to 2015 to 2018. Figure 1 presents the correlation between academic achievement and gender inequality. Unconditional Pearson correlation analyses were also conducted separately for boys and girls. The results show that both country variables are significantly correlated with academic achievement from 2012 to 2018, regardless of gender and subject (see Table 2 ). Furthermore, when Fisher’s Z test was used to compare correlation coefficients, we found that the correlations between GII and academic achievement were significantly greater than those between the Gini coefficient and academic achievement (overall mean scores of the three tested subjects) in the 2012 PISA ( Fisher’s Z  = 1.95 , P  = 0.025), the 2015 PISA ( Fisher’s Z  = 3.53 , P  < 0.001), and the 2018 PISA ( Fisher’s Z  = 2.25 , P  = 0.012). These results indicate that the GII may have a stronger association with academic achievement than the Gini coefficient from 2012 to 2018. Second, stepwise regression analyses (see Table 3 ) of economic inequality and gender inequality for academic achievement were established at the country level. In Model 1, the Gini coefficient is included with GDP per capita as a covariate. In Model 2, the GII is added to the regression. The results of Model 1 show that economic inequality is strongly associated with academic achievement in three years: 2012, β  = −0.49, p  < 0.001; 2015, β  = −0.44, p  < 0.001; and 2018, β  = −0.45, p  < 0.001. However, the results of Model 2 show that once the GII is included as an independent variable, the explanatory power of the Gini coefficient disappears, and the association between economic inequality and academic achievement is no longer statistically significant: 2012, β  = −0.02, p  = 0.915; 2015, β  = −0.03, p  = 0.755; and 2018, β  = −0.09, p  = 0.369. In Model 2, the GII became the only significant predictor for the 2012 PISA, β  = −0.77, p  < 0.001; the 2015 PISA, β  = −0.79, p  < 0.001; and the 2018 PISA, β  = −0.69, p  < 0.001. Overall, 18%, 20%, and 15% of the total variance in academic achievement in 2012, 2015, and 2018, respectively, is explained by the GII.

Figures ( a ), ( b ), and ( c ) show scatter plots of academic achievement versus gender inequality index for PISA2012, PISA2015, and PISA2018, respectively. The vertical axis displays the mean scores in three tested subjects (math, reading, and science) for each country in that year, while the horizontal axis represents the corresponding values of the gender inequality index.

To test the robustness of these results, we conducted three types of robustness tests. First, we conducted stepwise regressions of the academic achievement of boys and girls at the country level. The results showed that the only significant predictor variable of academic achievement for both boys and girls was GII (Tables 4 , 5 ). For example, in the 2018 Model 2 of the 2018 PISA, the results for boys indicate that the prediction of the Gini coefficient is not statistically significant ( β  = −0.04, p  = 0.712), while the prediction of the GII is significant ( β  = −0.69, p  < 0.001). For girls in the 2018 PISA study, the prediction of the Gini coefficient was not significant ( β  = −0.13, p  = 0.183), while the prediction of the GII was significant ( β  = −0.69, p  < 0.001). These findings show that the academic achievement of both boys and girls is negatively associated with gender inequality, and the negative association seems to be stronger than that between academic achievement and economic inequality.

Second, the mediation analyses (see Fig. 2 for the mediation path) show that the GII mediates the relationship between the Gini coefficient and academic achievement (see Table 6 ). The ratio of the indirect effect to the total effect of the Gini coefficient on academic achievement is 96.85% for the 2012 PISA, 92.93% for the 2015 PISA, and 70.22% for the 2018 PISA. These findings confirm that there is a stronger association between academic achievement and gender inequality than between academic achievement and economic inequality.

This graph illustrates the pathway from economic inequality to gender inequality to academic achievement. The pathway was initially identified in the stepwise regressions and later confirmed through mediation analysis.

Finally, we investigate the causality between gender inequality and academic achievement using a fixed effects model based on country-year panel data (see Table 7 ). In the panel regression, we use mean scores for three tested subjects (math, reading and science) and respective scores for math, reading and science literacy to represent country-level academic achievement. The GII and Gini coefficient are used as independent variables. The GDP per capita, the country fixed effect and the year fixed effect are controlled for in the regression. The results show that the coefficients of GII in all four regression models are negatively significant, which suggests that an increase in gender inequality will significantly weaken students’ academic achievement. Specifically, for every unit increase in the GII, reading scores decrease by an average of 0.47 units, math scores decrease by an average of 0.18, and science scores decrease by an average of 0.29 units. These results suggest that gender inequality has the smallest impact on math achievement. However, as shown in each model, the Gini coefficient has no significant effect on students’ academic achievement, suggesting that economic inequality cannot explain changes in academic achievement.

Result 2: individual-level analysis

Multilevel mixed-effects models at the student level were constructed and supported the significant association of gender inequality with academic achievement over the three cycles (Table 8 , Model A). Following the PISA guidelines, sampling weights were applied to our analyses. In the model, the student level is nested at the school level, and the school level is nested at the country level. We include two student variables (gender and socioeconomic status), three school variables (location, shortage of staff, and educational resources), and three country variables (GDP per capita, Gini coefficient, and GII). As shown in the results of Model A in Table 8 , GII has a significant main effect on academic achievement in all three test subjects for the 2018 PISA, suggesting that when the GII of a country decreases by 0.1 point (the extreme values are 0 and 1), the scores of students in that country increase by 16.58 to 29.36 points. This pattern persists for the 2015 PISA and the 2012 PISA, suggesting a consistent relationship between gender inequality and academic achievement over time.

Notably, the Gini coefficient is nonsignificant for all three years. To further confirm the close relationship between GII and academic achievement, we ran “horse races” at the student level and used three machine learning techniques (LASSO, random forest, XGBoost) for model selection to compare the explanatory power of GII, GDP, and the Gini coefficient for academic achievement for the 2018 PISA. All three machine learning results (see Table 9 ) show that GII exhibits near-top ranking explanatory power for academic performance among the three country-level variables, consistently surpassing the predictive strength of the Gini coefficient, which is consistent with the results from the multilevel mixed-effects model. The results hold true when the data for boys’ and girls’ students are analysed separately. In summary, the machine learning results also confirm that the gender inequality captured by the GII can predict academic achievement better than the economic inequality captured by the Gini coefficient.

Finally, multilevel mixed-effects models are also constructed for the three dimensions of the GII to determine which dimension of gender inequality is more relevant for academic achievement. As shown in the results of Model B in Table 8 , one main finding is that gender inequality in female reproductive health is associated with academic achievement for the 2015 PISA and the 2018 PISA. The full models are provided in Supplementary Tables 3 – 8 .

This study showed that gender inequality is negatively associated with academic achievement. Gender is essentially a system of cultural beliefs about gender that influence people’s activities 62 . Among these beliefs, some may be stereotypical. For example, it is believed that girls are not as good as boys at mathematics, which is a kind of gender stereotype about academic capabilities. According to social cognitive learning theory 39 , adolescent gender stereotypes about academic capabilities and performance are shaped by pervasive practices. As institutional expressions of societal attitudes and important places for students’ socialization, schools intentionally or unintentionally communicate inequalities to adolescents 63 , 64 . For example, the socioeconomic characteristics of adolescents’ peers in school are significantly related to their academic achievement in Türkiye 6 . According to 20 years of comparable data for 13 countries from the TIMSS, an increased mathematics achievement gap is observed in educational systems that tend to be decentralized or reduce investment in education 4 . This process holds true, especially in countries with more liberal egalitarian societies 65 , where gender discrimination and self-identity are driven by the gender essentialist ideology (e.g., cultural beliefs in fundamental and innate gender differences) and self-expressive value systems 28 , 62 . An adolescent may seek better academic achievement when he or she has high efficacy expectancies and perceives a good chance of succeeding academically 66 . However, gender stereotypes in the academic domain are very common 40 , 67 and may have a negative impact on adolescents’ academic achievement via expectations of their competence and performance 41 . In this vein, a negative relationship between gender inequality and academic achievement is observed in this study.

More importantly, there is a robust association between gender inequality and academic achievement for both boys and girls. This finding reflects a loss-of-function result of gender inequality for both boys and girls, leading to the conclusion that the negative aspects of gender inequality manifest at the overall societal level. One possible explanation for this finding may be that both girls and boys are subject to gender stereotypes. It is well known that negative stereotypes can disrupt the academic achievement of disadvantaged students through negative expectations 41 . However, positive expectations can also harm the performance of advantaged students when a promotion focus is activated 68 . Individuals are sensitive to positive cues and hence show impaired performance when confronted with positive expectations due to apprehensions about meeting maximal objectives. They may “choke under pressure” in the face of a positive stereotype 42 . In this way, gender inequality is negatively associated with academic achievement for both boys and girls through gender stereotypes.

Consistent with our hypothesis, gender inequality is more strongly associated with academic achievement than economic inequality is. Furthermore, according to the results of the fixed effects panel regression, gender inequality, not economic inequality, can explain the change in academic achievement from 2012 to 2018. These findings are somewhat counterintuitive since economic factors are usually found to be the most important enabling conditions in education 31 . One possible explanation is that gender inequality has a more proximal role than economic inequality in academic achievement. Moreover, gender inequality may be an enduring social consequence of economic inequality. Economic inequality tends to breed status seeking and rank competition 69 , 70 . Men and woman have been found to exhibit different levels of efficiency in competitive environments 71 . In this manner, economic inequality may result in an increase in gender inequality. Gender inequality further permeates from society to school, directly impacting academic achievement. According to the cultural evolution perspective of schooling, schooling can socialize students to accept a higher-payoff cultural model by immersing children in a structure of rewards and sanctions 63 . As members of both society and school, teachers pass their gender stereotypes formed in society to students. Through such transmission, gender inequality may produce an impact on students’ academic performance. Moreover, gender inequality can permeate from society to family. It is argued that gender inequality in family hinders the progress of education 38 . Mothers’ physical and mental well-being, educational attainment, and occupational standing significantly influences the academic achievement of both boys and girls 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 .

Economic inequality and gender inequality are intricate social constructs with intertwined yet distinct characteristics. Economic disparities exacerbate gender inequality by amplifying existing barriers faced by women in accessing education, healthcare, and economic opportunities 76 , 77 . Conversely, gender inequality contributes to economic disparities by impeding women’s participation in the labour force, entrepreneurship, and decision-making roles, as highlighted 61 , 78 . However, economic inequality and gender inequality have distinct drivers and manifestations. Economic inequality primarily stems from disparities in wealth, income, and access to resources 79 . Economic inequality involves tangible and externally observable forms of physical resources. In contrast, as a kind of social capital, gender inequality may be more deeply rooted and broadly complicated than economic inequality is. Gender inequality consists of less tangible functional social capital, including predominant attitudes, norms of behaviour and shared values within a social unit 48 . Therefore, gender inequality is often seen as a multidimensional phenomenon that implies a gender gap in health, education, income, labour and political participation 47 .

Finally, an interesting finding is that gender inequality in reproductive health may contribute greatly to the association between overall gender inequality and academic achievement. This finding is consistent with a prior study 31 in which a reduction in the adolescent birth rate and an increase in the percentage of parliamentary seats held by women were significantly associated with a positive change in PISA scores from 2006 to 2018. Reproductive health is specific to women and reflects health risks related to pregnancy and childbirth as well as limited educational and job opportunities 61 . By defining the “child penalty” as the percentage by which women fall behind men due to children, the long-term child penalty in earnings in Denmark was close to 20% over the period 1980–2013 80 . The mental health penalties of having a child have also been observed in a Chinese sample 81 . In this study, two indicators of female reproductive health, the maternal mortality ratio and the adolescent birth ratio, essentially reflect child penalties for the health and opportunities faced by women. Therefore, it is not surprising that they contribute substantially to the influence of gender inequality on academic achievement.

In conclusion, this study reveals that gender inequality rather than economic inequality is strongly associated with academic achievement for both boys and girls. The underlying mechanism may consist of positive or negative gender stereotypes that hinder adolescents’ academic investment and performance. Therefore, appropriate policies are needed to improve gender inequality. Despite substantial reductions in gender equality worldwide, addressing gender inequality remains a global challenge because “gender inequality is deeply imbued in the norms of institutions, their decision-making processes, forms of exercising power, their rules, unwritten cultures, and approaches to allocating resources” 20 . Multisectoral and multilevel approaches from the community to the country level are needed. Economic, gender and educational equality are intertwined 64 and constitute a multidirectional feedback system; thus, efforts in each domain and at each level are indispensable.

This study has several limitations that should be addressed in future research. First, our conclusions are restricted to the context of the use of PISA scores as indicators of academic achievement and GII scores as an indicator of gender inequality. Second, our analyses at the country level are based on academic achievement in each country, which may mask educational inequality within countries 82 . Future studies can consider the performance gap as an indicator of academic achievement by calculating the difference between high-performing and low-performing students within each country to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of academic achievement. Third, this study investigates gender as a noun when considering gender differences in education systems. Gender can be understood as an adjective when considering how gendered relations of power, distribution of resources, and forms of struggle occur in educational settings or as a verb when considering mixed gender identities, performances or actions and the space of education as active and changing in its movement between times, spaces and discourses 21 . Finally, although we explored causality using the fixed-effect model, we should be cautious in explaining the causal associations detected in this study given the cross-sectional nature of PISA data at the student level and the nonexperimental design of the study.

The programme for international student assessment

PISA data are obtained from students, parents, teachers, and school principals through the completion of academic assessments and self-reported contextual questionnaires. This assessment measures the ability of 15-year-olds to use their reading, mathematics, and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges 83 . It assesses whether national and regional education models or the quality of education have achieved the goal of preparing students to become well-rounded individuals for modern society 83 . Since 1997, the PISA has published a total of seven cycles of data collection at a triennial measurement frequency. Each wave of data includes students’ mathematical, reading, and science literacies, which are fixed from year to year. Other literacies and students’ information on learning backgrounds change from year to year. We used data from the 2012 PISA, the 2015 PISA, and the 2018 PISA, which include 65, 72, and 79 countries and economies, respectively, covering a total of 1,569,379 students. In this study, not all countries were covered due to the absence of key variables for some countries and economies. Detailed sample information can be found in Supplementary Table 1 . The correlations between country variables can be found in Supplementary Table 2 .

PISA methodology, plausible values, and sampling weights

To mitigate the impact of student fatigue and the constraints of time available for testing and to encompass a broader spectrum of measurements, the PISA employs item response theory (IRT) models for scaling. Rather than responding to all the questions in a particular administration, students are tasked with answering a subset of questions selected from a larger pool. The probability distributions of their ability levels are then estimated based on their responses to this specific subset of questions. Therefore, the cognitive item scores provided by the PISA do not represent students’ actual scores on those items. Instead, they constitute several randomly selected values derived from an estimated distribution of students’ ability levels, referred to as ‘plausible values’. According to the 2012 PISA, five plausible value scores were assigned per cognitive item, while the 2015 and 2018 PISA offered ten scores per item. In this study, we performed analyses at both the country and individual levels. At the country level, we employed the PISA-endorsed code generator data analysis software IDB Analyzer to calculate national academic achievement scores through plausible value computations. These outcomes are also detailed in the official reports published by the PISA. For individual-level analysis, we utilized Hierarchical Linear and Nonlinear Modeling (HLM) software, which is specialized software designed to dissect complex multilevel data structures and facilitate the calculation of plausible values.

The PISA sampling process involves two steps, namely, selecting a sample of schools containing the target group for the study and then randomly selecting 35 students from the chosen schools. However, the probability of selection for each student is not uniform and varies with the school’s size. Larger schools with more students have a lower probability of student selection, and vice versa. This can result in undersampling or oversampling issues within participating schools. To rectify this, sampling weights are adjusted for each student and school in the sample. In this study, individual-level analyses were conducted, applying sampling weights at both the student and school levels to address bias.

Ethical approval and informed consent are not applicable to this study because the data used here are from publicly available databases (PISA, World Bank, and United Nations Development Program) and no experiments were conducted.

Overview of key variables

Academic achievement. The definition of academic achievement is contingent upon the indicators employed for its measurement 84 . In this study, we analysed data based on three cycles of the PISA from 2012 to 2018 using areas of academic achievement (math, reading, science) as independent variables. In both the country-level and student-level analyses, we used the literacy scores for mathematics, reading, and science as outcome variables. In the country-level analyses, the mean scores of the three tested subjects were also analysed.

Economic Inequality. The Gini coefficient is the most common measure of economic inequality 85 . The Gini index measures the area between the Lorenz curve and a hypothetical line of absolute equality, which is expressed as a percentage of the maximum area under the line 86 . A Lorenz curve plots the cumulative percentages of total income received against the cumulative number of recipients, starting with the poorest individual. A Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality 87 . We chose the widely used and recognizable Gini coefficient calculated by the World Bank 87 , which is based on key household survey data obtained from government statistical agencies and World Bank country departments.

Gender Inequality. The data on gender inequality were derived from the GII reported in the ‘Human Development Report’ of the UNDP. This index, which was first published in 2010, is a composite indicator that quantifies the losses a country experiences as a result of gender inequality 61 and maintains the frequency of annual measurements published in the following year’s ‘Human Development Report’. The GII consists of five indicators in three dimensions. The female reproductive health dimension is a synthesis of the maternal mortality rate and the adolescent fertility rate; the empowerment dimension is a combination of the share of seats in parliament and the population with at least some secondary education; and the labour force dimension is calculated from the labour force participation rate. Five indicators are reported in the ‘Human Development Report’ 88 , 89 , 90 . We calculated gender inequality in the three dimensions according to the formula used to calculate the GII. The specific calculations can be found in Method 5.

Overview of covariates

In this study, seven covariates were considered: two at the student level, four at the school level, and one at the country level. These covariates were sourced from the PISA database for both the student and school levels and from the World Bank database for the country level.

Gender: Gender was coded as 1 for girls and 2 for boys across all three cycles of the database.

The index of economic, cultural, and social status (ESCS): The ESCS serves as a measure of students’ access to family resources, including financial capital, social capital, cultural capital, and human capital. It reflects the social position of the student’s family or household and can be interpreted as an approximation of an individual’s ranking in national and global society. The ESCS is derived from the combination of parents’ educational level (in years), parents’ occupational status on the International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI) scale, and family wealth.

For the HLM analyses for each year, three school-level covariates were considered. The difference lies in the specific covariates employed in the 2012, 2015, and 2018 analyses. In the 2018 and 2015 analyses, the school-level covariates consisted of school location, shortage of materials, and shortage of educational staff. In contrast, the 2012 analysis employed school location, shortage of teachers, and student-teacher ratio, as shortages of materials were not assessed in the 2012 PISA.

School location: The school principal provided information regarding the school’s location by responding to the following question: ‘Which of the following definitions best describes the community in which your school is located?’ with options ranging from 1 for ‘village’ to 5 for ‘large city’.

Shortage of materials: School principals reported on the extent to which the school’s capacity to provide instruction is hindered by the shortage or inadequacy of various resources, including science laboratory equipment, instructional materials such as textbooks, computers for instruction, internet connectivity, computer software for instruction, library materials, and audiovisual resources. These responses were aggregated to create a composite index of material resources, with an average of zero and a standard deviation of one for OECD countries. Higher values of this index indicate fewer hindrances to instruction due to resource shortages.

Shortages of educational staff: School principals’ assessments of the extent to which instruction in their school is hindered by a lack of qualified teachers and staff in key areas were used to create a composite index of teacher shortages. This index also had an average of 0 and a standard deviation of 1 for OECD countries, with higher values indicating a perception of more problems with instruction due to teacher shortages.

Student-teacher ratio: The student-teacher ratio was calculated by dividing the school size by the total number of teachers. Part-time teachers were weighted by 0.5, and full-time teachers were weighted by 1.0 in the computation of this index.

The GDP per capita, which is calculated as the gross domestic product divided by the midyear population, serves as a critical economic indicator. The GDP itself represents the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy, including any product taxes and minus any subsidies not accounted for in the value of the products. This calculation does not factor in deductions for the depreciation of fabricated assets or the depletion and degradation of natural resources. The data are presented in current U.S. dollars. For more detailed information, please refer to the following link: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD .

Calculation methods for the three subdimensions of the GII

The GII comprises five indicators organized into three dimensions. The female reproductive health dimension combines the maternal mortality rate and the adolescent fertility rate, the empowerment dimension incorporates the share of seats in parliament with the share of the population with at least some secondary education, and the labour force dimension is derived from the labour force participation rate. These five indicators are reported in the ‘Human Development Report’. To calculate gender inequality across these three dimensions, we followed the formula used for computing the GII. The specific calculation method is outlined as follows.

First, we aggregate across dimensions within each gender group using geometric means. For the productive health dimension, the aggregation formula for females is G F  =  \(\sqrt{(\frac{10}{{MMR}}\times \frac{1}{{ABR}})}\) ; the formula for males is G M  = 1. For the empowerment dimension, the aggregation formula for females is G F  =  \(\sqrt{{PR}(F)\times {SE}(F)}\) ; the formula for males is G M= \(\sqrt{{PR}(M)\times {SE}(M)}\) . For the labour market dimension, the aggregation formula for females is G F  = LFPR(F); the formula for males is G M  =  LFPR(M) .

Second, we aggregate across gender groups using a harmonic mean. For all dimensions, the following equation is used: HARM ( G F , G M ) = [(( G F ) −1  + ( G M ) −1 )/2] −1 .

Third, we calculate the geometric mean of the arithmetic means for each indicator. For the productive health dimension, the following equation is used: \(\bar{{Productive\; healt}h}\)  = ( \(\,\sqrt{(\frac{10}{{MMR}}\times \frac{1}{{ABR}})}\)  + 1)/2. For the empowerment dimension, the following equation is used: \(\overline{{Empowermen}{\rm{t}}}\)  = ( \(\sqrt{{PR}(F)\times {SE}(F)}\)  +  \(\sqrt{{PR}(M)\times {SE}(M)}\) )/2. For the labour market dimension, the following equation is used: \(\overline{{Labor\; market}}\)  = ( LFPR(F)  +  LFPR(M) )/2.

Finally, Gender inequality in productive health = 1 −  HARM ( G F , G M )/ \(\overline{{Healt}h}\) . Gender inequality in empowerment = 1 −  HARM ( G F , G M )/ \(\overline{{Empowerment}}\) . Gender inequality in the labour market = 1− HARM ( G F , G M )/ \(\overline{{Labor\; market}}\) .

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

PISA data are available at https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/ . Gender Inequality Index are available in UNDP’s Human Development Report which can be found at https://hdr.undp.org/reports-and-publications . Gini coefficients are available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI . GDP per capita are available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD . All codes used for the analyses are available by request directed tothe corresponding author.

Code availability

All codes used for the analyses are available by request directed to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by [National Natural Science Foundation of China] [No. 31470996 and No. 31871120]. The funder played no role in study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of data, or the writing of this manuscript.

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Zhang, L., Chao, B., Gao, Y. et al. Gender Inequality is negatively associated with academic achievement for both boys and girls. npj Sci. Learn. 9 , 49 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-024-00261-7

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What are the origins of gender inequality?

Author: guest contributor.

In honor of International Women's Day (March 8th) we're highlighting the expertise and experience of a few of our female authors whose own research investigates topics related to gender equality. Here we're sharing a guest blog from Marja Aartsen, a research professor, working at NOVA -Norwegian Social Research of Oslo Metropolitan University. Plus, explore Springer Nature's new SDG5 hub for more discussions around gender equality.

Written by Marja J. Aartsen, PhD

The most comprehensive answer probably comes from life course theories, originally formulated by Glen Elder. In short, according to this theory, the disadvantaged position of women should be understood as the outcome of a life-long process and an interplay between the individual’s preferences and resources, the lives of other people to whom they are linked, the timing of decisions, norms and values about gender, and opportunities or barriers created by the society. In other words, the creation of gender inequality is a subtle, life-long and partly unconscious process, fuelled among others by implicit cognitions about the role of men and women in society, and gendered stereotypical pictures.

While gender inequalities exist in nearly all countries of the world, there is a huge variation across countries. Nordic countries are doing relatively well, with a gender gap in labour participation of approximately 4% compared to 12% on average in OECD countries and 20% in Italy. Different policies unmistakably contributed to this gender equality, such as the dual earner/dual career model and paid parental leave for mothers and fathers. There are more subtle processes that stimulate gender equality in Nordic countries, such as images of women operating machines in advertisements of hardware stores and men taking care of toddlers and children in public spaces. Yet, only one out of three managers is femal e, even in the egalitarian Nordic countries. Breaking the vicious circle of the construction and reconstruction of gender inequality requires a growing awareness of all the structural and individual factors that create or amplify gender inequalities.

Unveiling factors contributing to these gender inequalities, however, is not easy task. It requires a careful comparison of nations and welfare states but cross-national studies addressing gender differences are scarce. One exception is the research project GENPATH , funded by the EU-Gender-Net Plus program to promote gender equality. GENPATH is a research collaboration between six European countries and Israel. In this research project, we aim at analysing the origin of gender differences in the prevalence and generation of exclusion from mainstream society, and consequences for health and wellbeing across European countries. Research so far suggests that differences between men and women are not clear-cut, as there are complex orders of advantage and disadvantage, oppression, and discrimination, which only certain (gender)-groups face, based on their location at the intersection of gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality, and economic background.   Research on the origins of gender inequality is valuable for the scientific debate and important for raising the awareness of the subtle processes enlarging the gender gap. While important, it is only the beginning of closing the gender gap. In order to reach sustainable solutions to enhance gender equality in the many facets of life and society, strategies should be multi-faceted. Sustainable solutions to reduce the gender gap should stimulate full autonomy and independence for women and men, by stimulating education and lifelong learning, equal rights to participate in society, equal sharing of family care and not in the least a paradigm shift in the stereotypical private and public images on the role of gender. Finally, for a more sustainable shift towards gender equality, policies should be gender-proof, i.e. checked for any potential gender discriminatory effect that could arise by the regulation. 

This helps to increase gender equality, not only as a “fundamental human right, but also as a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world” (United Nations fifth Sustainable Developmental Goal).

Explore Springer Nature's new SDG5 hub dedicated to gender equality

About Marja J. Aartsen

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100 Gender Research Topics For Academic Papers

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

Sociology Psychology Gender studies Business studies

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

Controversial Gender Research Topics

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

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

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

Interesting Gender Inequality Topics

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

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

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

Amazing Gender Roles Topics for Academic Papers and Essays

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

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

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

Important Gender Issues Topics for Research Paper

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

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

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

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

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143 Unique Gender Inequality Essay Titles & Examples

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

👩 Top 10 Gender Equality Title Ideas

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

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

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TOP 100 Gender Equality Essay Topics

Table of Contents

Need ideas for argumentative essay on gender inequality? We’ve got a bunch!

… But let’s start off with a brief intro.

What is gender equality?

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

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

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

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

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

What is the specifics of gender equality essay?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Powerful gender equality essay topics

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

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

Use imagination and creativity to demonstrate your approach.

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

Gender roles essay topics

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

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

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

Gender inequality research paper topics

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

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

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

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

Most controversial gender topics

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

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

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

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

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

APA Format: Easy Explanations And Samples

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Demographics

Gender inequality in the United States - statistics & facts

Is the future of politics female, a dual burden for mothers, key insights.

Detailed statistics

U.S. beliefs on how being a man or a woman affects one's ability to get ahead 2023

U.S. female to male earnings ratio 1990-2022

Pressures faced by employed parents in the U.S. in 2022, by gender

Editor’s Picks Current statistics on this topic

Wages & Salaries

U.S. adults on the reason women earn less than men 2022

U.S. gender wage gap, by industry 2021

U.S. reasons for supporting the #MeToo movement 2022

Share of female leaders in the United States, by position in 2023

Share of parents who faced various challenges with childcare U.S. 2023

Further recommended statistics

Latin America & Caribbean: gender pay gap index 2024, by country

Gender pay gap index based on estimated earned income in selected countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2024

People who think giving women equal rights has gone far enough 2023, by country

Share of people worldwide who agree with the statement that giving women equal rights has gone far enough in 2023, by country and gender

Opinions on women's rights in Italy 2024, by gender

Do you think that things have gone far enough in Italy when it comes to giving women equal rights with men?

Gender equality index of Poland 2005-2023

Gender equality index of Poland compared to European Union (EU-28) from 2005 to 2023

Gender distribution of ticket holders for The Women's Ashes in England 2023

Share of ticket buyers for The Women’s Ashes in England in 2023, by gender

Gender equality situation in Japanese society 2023

Opinion on gender equality within Japanese society as of April 2023

Media rights value of leading women's sports events 2023-2025

Media rights value of selected women's sporting events in 2023, with a forecast for 2025 (in million U.S. dollars)

Latin America & Caribbean: gender wage equality perception index 2023

Perceived gender wage equality for similar work in selected countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2023

Opinion in Sweden on whether gender equality has gone too far 2024

Share of population in Sweden thinking that things have gone so far when it comes to giving men and women equal rights that men are discriminated against in 2024

U.S. Gender Parity Index 2023, by state

Gender Parity Index score for women's representation in government in the United States in 2023, by state

Most Women's FA Cup titles 1970-2024, by club

Clubs with the most Women's FA Cup titles as of 2024

Most Women's Champions League titles 2001-2024, by club

Clubs with the most UEFA Women's Champions League titles as of 2024

Biggest attendances in women's sports worldwide 2024

Highest-attended women's sporting events worldwide as of 2024

Biggest attendances in women's soccer worldwide 2024

Highest-attended women's soccer games worldwide as of 2024

Revenue of Women's Super League clubs 2022-2023, by club

Revenue of clubs in the FA Women's Super League in 2022/23, by club (in million GBP)

Combined revenue of Women's Super League clubs 2020-2025

Total revenue of clubs in the FA Women's Super League from 2020/21 to 2022/23, with a forecast to 2024/25 (in million GBP)

Total of addressed concerns involving women's rights violations Indonesia 2016-2021

Number of complaints handled pertaining to women's rights violations and violence against women in Indonesia from 2016 to 2021

Record transfers in women's soccer worldwide 2024

Most expensive transfers in women's soccer worldwide as of 2024 (in thousand GBP)

Leading women's soccer clubs worldwide 2022-2023, by revenue

Women's soccer clubs with the highest revenue worldwide in 2022/23 (in million euros)

Opinion on achieving gender equality in society in Japan 2023

Opinion on working towards gender equality in Japanese society as of April 2023

Share of individuals agreeing with statements about gender equality in Sweden 2024

Share of respondents agreeing with the following statements regarding gender equality in Sweden in 2024

Gender equality situation in Japanese society 2023, by gender

Opinion on gender equality within Japanese society as of April 2023, by gender

Gender equality situation at work in Japan 2023

Opinion on gender equality in the workplace in Japan as of April 2023

Gender equality situation in media in Japan 2023

Opinion on gender equality in media representation in Japan as of April 2023

Gender equality situation in the legal system in Japan 2023

Opinion on gender equality in law and constitution in Japan as of April 2023

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Opinion on gender equality in customs and traditions in Japan as of April 2023

Gender equality situation in schools in Japan 2023

Opinion on gender equality in schools in Japan as of April 2023

Gender equality situation in families in Japan 2023

Opinion on gender equality in family households in Japan as of April 2023

Gender distribution of TV viewers of the Women's Six Nations in the UK 2022-2023

Share of TV viewers of the Women's Six Nations Championship in the United Kingdom in 2022 and 2023, by gender

Gender equality index of Hungary 2005-2021

Gender equality index of Hungary from 2005 to 2021

Gender equality index of Slovakia 2005-2021

Gender equality index of Slovakia from 2005 to 2021

Gender equality index of Czechia 2005-2021

Gender equality index of Czechia from 2005 to 2021

Opinion on equality of opportunity for promotion in Poland 2024, by gender

Do all employees with similar qualifications have equal opportunity for promotion, regardless of gender?

Attitude towards gender equality efforts in Japan 2023

Opinion on whether Japan should make efforts towards achieving gender equality as of April 2023

Average attendance of selected European women's soccer leagues 2021-2024

Average match attendance of selected women's soccer leagues in Europe from 2021/22 to 2023/24

Average attendance in the FA Women's Super League 2021-2024, by club

Average matchday attendance of clubs in the FA Women's Super League from 2021/22 to 2023/24, by club

Economic impact of the Women’s World Cup in New Zealand 2023

Key figures on the economic impact of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in New Zealand in 2023

Most popular women's sports leagues in the U.S. 2023

Most popular women's professional sports leagues and competitions in the United States as of February 2023

Women's Empowerment Index scores worldwide 2023, by region

Women's Empowerment Index scores worldwide in 2023, by region

Engagement in men's and women's sporting events worldwide 2023

Preference between watching men's or women's sports among fans worldwide as of April 2023, by sport

Public opinion on the field with the most gender inequality in Mexico 2021, by gender

Share of people who believe there is a strong gender inequality in diverse fields in Mexico in 2021, by field and gender

Highest-ranked women's soccer clubs in Europe 2024, by UEFA ranking

Leading women's soccer clubs in Europe as of June 2024, by UEFA ranking

Canadian sales of the women’s apparel market by segment 2023

Sales value of the women’s apparel market in Canada in 2023, by segment (in million Canadian dollars)

Wage costs of Women's Super League clubs 2022-2023, by club

Wage costs of clubs in the FA Women's Super League in 2022/23, by club (in million GBP)

Highest-ranked women's national soccer teams worldwide 2024

Leading women's national soccer teams worldwide as of March 2024, by FIFA ranking

Global women's sportswear market size from 2018 to 2027

Women's performance sports apparel market value worldwide from 2018 to 2027 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Women's clothing store sales in the United States from 1992 to 2023

Women's clothing store sales in the United States from 1992 to 2023 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Total attendance at the Women's World Cup 1991-2023

Total stadium attendance at the FIFA Women's World Cup from 1991 to 2023

Players with the most Women's World Cup appearances 1991-2023

Players with the most appearances in the FIFA Women's World Cup as of 2023

Highest-ranked women's national soccer teams Africa 2023

Leading women's national soccer teams in Africa as of September 2023, by FIFA ranking

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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.

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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.

Taxation and Inequality

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This report, commissioned by the Brazilian G20 Presidency ahead of the July 2024 G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting, contributes to discussions on the role of tax systems in addressing inequality. It explores how tax systems can mitigate or exacerbate inequality with a focus on the distribution of income and wealth and identifies scope for potential reform. It zooms in on the specific tax policy and compliance challenges associated with taxing high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), some of which have a cross-border dimension.

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Addressing workplace gender inequality: Using the evidence to avoid common pitfalls

Michelle k. ryan.

1 Global Institute for Women's Leadership, The Australian National University, Canberra Australian Capital Territory, Australia

2 Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Groningen, Groningen The Netherlands

In this Landmark article I outline four common missteps that are made when designing and implementing workplace gender equality initiatives: (1) when we don't go beyond describing the numbers; (2) when we try to ‘fix’ women rather than fix systems; (3) when we are overly optimistic about the progress we have made; and (4) when we fail to recognise the intersectionality of the experiences that women face. I will briefly consider each of these missteps in term, presenting research that suggests alternative ways of approaching gender equality initiatives.

INTRODUCTION

Despite much progress in the past 50 years, workplace gender inequality remains a persistent problem. Worldwide, women only occupy about 37 per cent of leadership roles (World Economic Forum,  2022 ), the pay gap sits at approximately 20 per cent (International Labour Oragnisation, 2022 ), and women remain concentrated in low‐status, low‐paid jobs (UN Women,  2022 ). There are countless initiatives designed to address workplace gender equality—those that try to attract women to certain professions and roles where they are under‐represented, those that try to support women's career trajectories, and the those that try to retain women in the workforce. While the impetus behind these initiatives is generally positive, many of these interventions are not based on evidence, in terms of their design, their implementation or in the evaluation of their efficacy.

Most infamous in this space are those initiatives that build on an understanding that much gender discrimination (but certainly not all) is a result unconscious bias. The research most cited to underpin unconscious bias training is work on implicit prejudice and implicit associations (e.g. Devine,  1989 ; Greenwald et al.,  1998 ; Greenwald & Banaji,  1995 ). While there has been theoretical, methodological and psychometric debate about the utility of implicit tests such as the IAT (e.g. Blanton & Jaccard, 2006 ; Nosek & Sriram, 2007 ; see also Jost,  2019 ) what is of more interest here is the utility of unconscious bias training itself. While unconscious bias training is good at awareness raising, it is less effectual at achieving behaviour change or increased gender equality (e.g. Atewologun et al.,  2018 ; Bezrukova et al.,  2016 ; Kalev et al., 2006 ) and has been shown to have unintended negative consequences such as backfiring or feelings of false progress (e.g. Dover et al.,  2020 ; Leslie,  2019 ).

In my current role, as the Director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at The Australian National University, I have three key responsibilities (1) to conduct research to better understand gender inequality, (2) to work with organizations and government to translate the evidence base into effective policy and practice and (3) to advocate for social change and gender equality. It is at the nexus of these three endeavours that I can see where we get it right, and where we, unfortunately, get it wrong.

In this Landmark article I outline four common missteps that are made when designing and implementing workplace gender equality initiatives: (1) when we do not go beyond describing the numbers; (2) when we try to ‘fix’ women rather than fix systems; (3) when we are overly optimistic about the progress we have made; and (4) when we fail to recognize the intersectionality of the experiences that women face. I will briefly consider each of these missteps in term, presenting research that suggests alternative ways of approaching gender equality initiatives. 1

WHEN NUMBERS JUST AREN'T ENOUGH

One of the first steps in many gender equality action plans is to do an audit of the representation of women. How many women are in the organization? How many women are in decision‐making roles? How many women are there in senior management and on the boards of directors? This number crunching extends to describing other inequalities: How big is the gender pay gap? How many women were promoted in the last promotions round? What is the success rate of female job applicants? This approach is common in many internal organizational gender equality plans (Ely & Thomas,  2020 ), and as part of many external accreditation programmes (e.g. Rosser et al.,  2019 ). Understanding representation and understanding key metrics of gender equality are a necessary part of achieving gender equality—but they are not sufficient. Such numbers are a great starting point as they identify problem areas to be rectified. But they do not tell the whole story.

In this section, I will outline a body of research on women in leadership and the glass cliff (Haslam & Ryan,  2008 ; Ryan & Haslam,  2005 , 2007 ) that illustrates why we cannot just stop at descriptive numbers. This work suggests that it is not enough to know whether women are in leadership positions, but when they are in leadership positions. It also illustrates the importance of looking at women's experiences in such positions. And finally, it illustrates the importance of understanding the psychological processes behind the appointment of women to leadership positions.

This body of research builds on the metaphor of the glass ceiling, that describes the under‐representation of women in leadership positions, to examine the conditions under which women are likely to be appointed to leadership positions. Almost 20 years of research has demonstrated the phenomenon whereby women are more likely to be appointed to leadership roles during times of crisis (see Morgenroth et al.,  2020 , & Ryan et al.,  2016 , for meta‐analyses and an overview). With the extension of the glass ceiling metaphor—the glass cliff—we hoped to capture the riskiness and precarity of such leadership positions: to give a sense of occupying a position up on high, yet of teetering on the edge.

The phenomenon of the glass cliff was first uncovered as a reaction to a newspaper article in The Times (Judge, 2003 ). This article presented evidence that companies that had more women on their boards of directors, had poorer share prices, and thus the increasing number of women on UK corporate board was ‘wreaking havoc’ on corporate Britain (p. 21). In response, Ryan and Haslam ( 2005 ) proposed an alternative analysis, whereby rather than women causing poor company performance, it was poor company performance that led to women being appointed to boards of directors. We conducted nuanced analysis of board appointments and monthly changes in company share prices that showed that this alternative explanation was indeed the case—(the small number of) women who were appointed to boards of directs, were appointed after a prolonged period of poor share price performance. Share price afterwards did not differ from their male counterparts.

Since this first discovery of the phenomenon, a global body of research on the glass cliff has emerged, one that uses multiple methodologies (archival analyses, experimental studies, case studies, qualitative work) to demonstrate the nuance and underlying processes associated with the glass cliff phenomenon (Morgenroth et al.,  2020 ; Ryan et al.,  2016 ). The glass cliff is not restricted to corporate settings, and has also been found in (a) the political sphere (e.g. Kulich et al.,  2015 ; Ryan et al.,  2010 )—as illustrated by all three of the UK's female Prime ministers: Thatcher (1980s recession), May (Brexit) and Truss (energy crisis and spiralling inflation); (b) sporting contexts (e.g. Wicker et al.,  2019 ); and (c) in non‐government, third sector organizations (e.g., Bogacz‐Wojtanowska et al.,  2018 ).

The importance of the glass cliff here is that it points to the necessity of looking beyond simply the number of women in leadership positions, to understand the circumstances under which women are likely to be appointment to such positions. If we just take the proportion of women in leadership roles as a measure of gender equality, then glass cliff appointments may be seen as an example of progress towards gender equality. But in reality, the opposite may be the case.

The context in which the glass cliff occurs can lead to such positions representing a new and subtle form of sexism or gender discrimination. Such a poisoned chalice potentially sets women up for additional scrutiny, stress and risk of failure. Indeed, the very risk and precarity experienced by those in glass cliff positions may hinder progress towards gender equality. Women in glass cliff positions are likely to face greater challenges in their leadership roles, such as (a) being blamed for negative conditions that were set in train long before they were appointed (Ryan & Haslam,  2005 ), shorter tenure (Glass & Cook,  2016 ) or (c) stress and burnout (Ryan et al.,  2009 ). These additional difficulties may contribute to the stagnation of women's representation in leadership positions, reinforcing stereotypes that women are not suited to leadership.

The glass cliff is just one example where the complexity of gender equality might be hidden behind the top‐line numbers. Understanding the subtlety and nuance behind the numbers gives us a truer sense of our progress towards gender equality. We can think of these in terms of who, when, why and where questions. For example, who bears the brunt of gender inequality—we know that gender inequality is fundamentally intersectional, being exacerbated by other group memberships (see Section ‘ When we are overly optimistic ’, below). When and where does inequality occur. And the big question for us as psychologists, is the why —what are the processes sitting behind the numbers, what drives inequality, and in turn, what do we need to do to help mitigate it.

Exploring beyond the numbers can also help inform us of the most effective ways to attack those problems. In the case of the glass cliff, looking beyond the number of appointments raises a whole new set of research questions to be asked (and answered). Are women preferentially selected by others for leadership in times crisis (yes, according to Haslam & Ryan,  2008 )? Are women appointed because we think they are good at dealing with crisis (no, according to Kulich et al.,  2015 ; Ryan et al.,  2011 ). Do women select these positions because they like a challenge (also no, according to Rink et al.,  2012 )?

WHEN WE TRY TO FIX WOMEN

The question of whether women self‐select into glass cliff positions leads us nicely into our next misstep—the tendency to focus on women when trying to solve the problem of gender inequality. Many of the approaches to improving gender equality recognize that the issues arise from inequalities embedded in our social and organizational structures and systems. Key here are the traditional gender stereotypes about what women and men are like (Ellemers,  2018 ) and what they should be like (Heilman, 2012 ). In particular, many workplace inequalities arise because the societal view of women's warmth is incompatible with societal views of leadership and success that prioritize notions of agency and competence (e.g. Koenig et al.,  2011 ; Schein,  1973 ). Importantly our social and organizational structures and systems are predicated on these gender norms and stereotypes (Eagly et al.,  2000 ), including recruitment, promotion and reward practices; parental leave and childcare policies; and educational systems.

However, this acknowledgement of systemic basis of gender equality often dissipates when it comes to actually implementing interventions and initiatives. There is a relatively consistent underlying assumption within these initiatives that gender inequalities can be addressed with a focus on individual competencies. From this perspective, we can narrow the gender equality gaps by providing women with additional skills and training. For example, initiatives to encourage girls and women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) are often focused on boosting their engagement and ambition (Liben & Coyle,  2014 ). Leadership training courses often focus on teaching women ‘girl boss’ leadership skills (Atir,  2022 ) and encouraging them to take greater risks and make bigger sacrifices, overcome impostor symptom, be authentic at work and negotiate the next promotion or pay rise (Hackworth et al.,  2018 ). This approach is epitomized by the ‘lean in’ approach to gender equality (Sandberg, 2013 ), which seeks to encourage women to make the right choices and have the right mindset.

All of these approaches have, as their implicit theory of change, an understanding that women are in some way broken and not up to the task. The solution is, therefore, seen to be to ‘fix’ them—to change their behaviours, address their skills deficit, remedy their mindset. But the evidence is very clear on this point—it is not women that need fixing, but the deeply entrenched systems of gender inequality that structure our organizations and structure society more broadly.

Below I outline some illustrative research that demonstrates that women's engagement and belonging, their feelings of impostor syndrome and their willingness to take risks are not individual‐level problems that renders them needing to be fixed. Rather, these issues are a direct product of organizational and societal systems, and their experiences in these systems and thus require structural solutions.

Engagement and belonging

One area in which this approach is highly visible is trying to attract and retain girls and women in male‐dominated sectors, such as STEM, finance and construction. Many of initiatives designed to increase gender inequality in these spaces focus on trying to increase girls' and women's interest for and engagement with these sectors (McKinnon,  2022 ), such as the heavily criticized campaign—Science: It's a Girl Thing—from the European Commission, which featured women in fashionable PPE making lipstick (Grosu, 2013 ). What is implicit here is that there is some sort of inherent lack of enthusiasm in women, that needs to be addressed, rather than the fact that women and girls are responding to very real cultural and normative barriers that exclude them (Saucerman & Vasquez,  2014 ).

In a series of studies looking at women in surgery—where women make up less than 25% per cent of the profession—Peters et al. ( 2012 ) examined whether the under‐representation of women may be explained, at least in part, by women's perceptions of, and experiences within, the profession. Across two studies we demonstrated that female surgical trainees perceived a lack of fit between themselves and the prototypical masculine surgeon. In turn, this perceived lack of fit was associated with a reduction in identification with the profession and an increased desire to opt out of the profession.

Similarly, work by Meeussen et al. ( 2022 ) demonstrate than in male‐dominated careers, such as surgery and the veterinary profession, women (compared to men) report less career engagement because of their more frequent experiences of gender discrimination and lower perceived fit with those higher up the career ladder. In turn, these barriers predicted reduced expectations of success in their field and expected success of their sacrifices, which in turn predicted lower willingness to make sacrifices.

Together, these studies suggest the role that external barriers, such as experiences of discrimination and perceptions of fit, play in women's career decision making in male‐dominated professions. Thus, trying to attract and retain women in these spaces by focusing on women themselves is unlikely to be fruitful. Rather, interventions need to address the root of the problem, discriminatory environments and a lack of role models if they want women to come and women to stay (see Casad et al.,  2018 ).

Imposter syndrome

Another area in which has received a lot of attention when it comes to women in the workplace are initiatives that seek to address impostor syndrome. This concept is used to describe individuals who express doubts about their self‐worth, failing to take credit for their successes or attributing their successes to luck. Such individuals worry that others will see them as impostors or frauds. The very use of the term ‘syndrome’ suggests that this experience is an individual‐level problem—a condition that requires diagnosis and treatment and fixing. And indeed, there will be no surprise to find out that there are many initiatives out there that are designed to help individuals, and in particular women, to overcome ‘their’ impostor syndrome. For example, such interventions seek to increase women's confidence, reduce their perfectionism and change their mindsets (Chandra et al.,  2019 ).

However, as Feenstra et al. ( 2020 ) argue, rather than being seen as a personal problem that plagues individual women, it is critical to acknowledge the role that the social and organizational context plays in eliciting feelings of impostorism (see also Kark et al.,  2022 ). Indeed, a series of studies by Begeny et al. ( 2022 ) demonstrate that impostor feelings can be seen as is a direct response to how one is treated by others. In a longitudinal study, we showed that that experiencing fewer expressions of distinctive treatment, such as being asked for advice, resulted in a significant increase in impostor feelings over time. Moreover, in experimental studies we showed that when individuals experience positive distinctive treatment from work colleagues, this significantly reduces impostor feelings.

In this way, characterizing impostor feelings at an individual level is unlikely to be useful, both in terms of running the risk of pathologizing these feelings and in terms of understanding where they come from. Thinking of impostor feelings as a context‐dependent outcome of workplace experiences has clear implications for how we ‘treat’ impostor syndrome. Rather than putting the onus on employees, particularly women, to overcome their own impostor feelings—being more confident and ‘faking it until you make it’—we need to implement more systemic approaches, creating cultures where colleagues are valued and treated with respect.

Risk taking

One common explanation for the persistence of workplace gender inequalities is that women are less willing to take career‐enhancing risks, such as asking for a pay rise or taking on a new position (Byrnes et al.,  1999 ). Indeed, women's risk aversion is a persistent aspect of gender stereotypes, with many arguing that this is an innate difference aspect of gender (Bem, 1974 ). Such an analysis has a number of issues, including the assumption that risk taking is inherent desirable and necessarily career enhancing, and because it fails to recognize the types of risks that women do take in everyday life (Morgenroth et al.,  2018 ). But nonetheless, a key facet of the lean in approach to fixing women is encouraging women to take more risks, including memetic advice such as ‘if you are offered a seat on a rocket ship, do not ask what seat, just get on’ and ‘fortune does favour the bold, and you never know what you are capable of if you do not try’ (Sandberg, 2013 ).

However, research demonstrates that far from being innate, women's willingness to take risks is dependent of their experiences in the workplace. Research conducted by Morgenroth et al. ( 2022 ) looks at gender differences in risk taking through a lens of the anticipated and experienced consequences of risk taking. Across three studies, there was no evidence for gender differences in initial risk taking or in the anticipation of consequences for the risks with which women and men had no prior experience. However, when we looked at actual experiences of risk taking in the workplace—such as taking on a difficult task, speaking up or quitting your job for a new job—men reported more positive consequences for taking risks than women, and as a result, anticipated having a greater likelihood of taking the same risks in the future.

Studies like this question the assumption that it is women's innate risk aversion that underlies workplace gender inequalities. Rather they demonstrate that any aversions women have are likely to be a consequence of their workplace experiences, and indeed, are likely to be informed by the gendered, negative experiences they have when attempting to take risks. For this reason, gender equality initiatives that focus on encouraging women to take more risks are unlikely to succeed, and it is the gendered costs and benefits for risk that need to be addressed.

Taken together, this exploration of some of the common ways in which initiatives target gender equality issues—engagement, impostor syndrome and risk taking—suggest that framing these as individual‐level problems is unlikely to be fruitful. At best, such an approach may provide those individual women who are targeted by such initiatives, usually women that hold a certain amount of privilege (see Section 4) with a short‐term advantage. At worst, such attempts to fix women reinforce the stereotypes and norms that form the basis of structural gender inequalities and become yet another demand on women's time. Interventions should, instead, target the foundational causes of inequality: organizational systems and culture.

WHEN WE ARE OVERLY OPTIMISTIC

If we compare where we are now on the workplace gender equality front, compared to where we have been historically, it is clear that there have been many positive changes—better gender representation, safer working conditions and more equality in terms of pay. But such changes are not linear, and neither are they inevitable. Indeed, over more recent time periods we have seen stagnation in these advances, in in some cases even backsliding (Word Economic Forus,  2022 ). Indeed, current forecasts suggest it will be at anywhere between 132 (Word Economic Forus,  2022 ) and 300 (UN Women,  2022 ) years before we reach global gender equality.

Part of the tension here lies in the degree to which we recognize and celebrate our gender equality accomplishments, and to what extent are we realistic about how much we still have to achieve. This decision is not just about whether or not one wants to be an optimistic person. An understanding of the degree to which gender inequalities persist, and in particular the denial of gender inequality, forms a key aspect of sexist attitudes, such as those captured by the modern sexism scale (Swim et al., 1995 ). Indeed, there are a number of very real consequences of failing to acknowledge the persistence of gender inequality.

Begeny et al. ( 2020 ) looked at what happens when traditionally male‐occupied professions, such as the veterinary profession, attract more women. While having a greater representation of women is clearly progress, some may take it as an indication that the discrimination is no longer a problem. We demonstrated that despite women being the majority of veterinary students and junior vets, female vets still report experiencing discrimination. In a follow‐up experimental study, we illustrated one way in which this discrimination manifests itself. Vets with managerial responsibilities evaluated a male vet as more competent and suggested paying him 8 per cent more than an equally qualified female vet. Key here, these discriminatory evaluations were evident primarily among those who believed women no longer face discrimination in the profession. Thus, even when positive change occurs, discrimination persists, ironically perpetuated by those who believe it is no longer a problem.

Research also demonstrates that progress towards gender equality may be hampered by those who overestimate the rate of progress. A study by Begeny et al. ( 2022 ) surveyed doctors in the United Kingdom who were asked to estimate the representation of women across a number of roles in the medical profession. Both male and female doctors consistently overestimated the number of women in medicine. However, while those women who over‐estimated female representation still supported gender‐equality initiatives, such as initiatives run by the Royal College of Surgeons and the General Medical Council, those men who were over‐optimistic about progress showed significantly lower levels of support. Thus, men who overestimated progress towards gender equality were at highest risk of undermining it (see also Coffé & Reiser, 2021 ).

Recognizing and celebrating progress towards gender equality is important for a sense of hope and collective efficacy, both necessary for continued motivation for change (e.g. Cohen‐Chen & Van Zomeren,  2018 ; Van Zomeren,  2013 ). However, studies like these suggest that there is potentially a fine line between optimism and a failure to recognize persistent inequalities. If we are to close the gap, and it would be nice if we could do so in less than a century, we need a healthy dose of realism and we need to acknowledge what still remains to be done.

WHEN WE AREN'T INTERSECTIONAL

A final common misstep that is taken when trying to address gender inequalities is to treat women as if they are a monolithic, homogenous group. There is often a ‘one size fits all’ approach to interventions and change (Tzanakou,  2019 ). But the experiences within women—between individuals and between different groups of women—are often more varied than the experiences between women and men. There is a need to understand this variety in women's experiences, and how this is determined by other intersecting identities, especially those that are marginalized or stigmatized (e.g. Crenshaw,  1991 ).

What is most troublesome about the one size fits all approach, is that gender interventions and initiatives are most often based on the experiences of the dominant group—such as those women who are white, middle‐class or straight. This is problematic, both because the experiences of such women are by no means universal, and because women not included in this group—for example culturally and linguistically diverse women, working‐class women, and LGBTQI+ women and gender diverse people, often face the greatest inequalities.

For example, research by Opara et al. ( 2020 ) identified that Black and minoritized women's workplaces experienced were very much influenced by their racial identities, including having stereotypes and expectations imposed upon them. Indeed, research demonstrates that Black women are treated on the basis of negative stereotypes that question their competence and their legitimacy (e.g. Williams & Dempsey,  2014 ) or see them as aggressive and masculine (Hall et al.,  2019 ). In contrast, Asian women may be affected by the model minority myth (Cheng et al.,  2017 ) and be seen as hyper‐competent (Liang & Peters‐Hawkins,  2017 ), but at the same time face stereotypes of low agency (Ghavami & Peplau,  2013 ) and hyper‐femininity (Mukkamala & Suyemoto,  2018 ).

These differential experiences mean that homogenous workplace gender equality initiatives are unlikely to be effective. Indeed, Wong et al. ( 2022 ) argue that diversity interventions tend not to take into account the wide variety of women's experiences. Across three studies we demonstrate that women who are racially marginalized need different things from their diversity interventions than do White women. More specifically we found that while White women focused on the needs of initiatives address issues of women's agency, Black women overtly reported the need for initiatives to take into account intersectional differences, such as racialized gender stereotypes where Black women are seen as pushy or overly assertive. Similarly, Asian women reported the need to address challenges to their authority which stem from racialized stereotypes of Asian women as passive and submissive. Importantly, our textual analysis of gender equality websites showed that organizations were less likely to represent the needs of Black and Asian women—a form of intersectional invisibility (Purdie‐Vaughns & Eibach,  2008 )—such that their gender equality advocacy tended to focus on (White women's) issues of agency, rather than issues of racialized stereotyping reported by Black and Asian women.

These findings suggest that if gender equality initiatives are going to be successful, they must take into account the wide variety of women's experiences and needs. Catering for just one group of women is unhelpful, particularly if that group of women as a whole are likely to experience less disadvantage. Interventions need to overtly address the issues faced by all women, not just those in the majority or those with the most privilege. This points to the importance of understanding the intersectional nature of gender inequality—taking into account that these inequalities are exacerbated and qualified by multiple forms of oppression, such as those based on race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, disability, age and linguistic diversity.

CONCLUSIONS

While the majority of gender equality initiatives are founded on good intentions, this in and of itself is not enough to bring about significant and lasting change. As we have seen above, interventions need to be based on a clear evidence base, one that (1) looks beyond the top line numbers to the complexity and nuance of gender inequality; (2) aims to fix the things that actually needs fixing (systems and structures) rather than trying to fix women; (3) celebrates change while at the same time being realistic about the challenges that are to come; and (4) understands the inherently intersectional nature of gender inequality.

The good news is that social psychology is perfectly situated to rise to all of these challenges. First, we are well placed to understand the processes and contexts that sit behind the top line numbers. For example, as we have seen, social psychological theories can help us understanding the gendered stereotypes than underlie our social and organizational policies and practices (e.g. Eagly et al.,  2000 ; Ellemers,  2018 ; Heilman, 2012 ; Koenig et al.,  2011 ). They can also help us understanding how workplace experiences can affect gendered workplace choices (e.g. Begeny et al.,  2022 ; Meeussen et al.,  2022 ; Morgenroth et al.,  2022 ).

Second, within our theories we have the ability to ensure we are asking the appropriate questions and that we are framing our questions at the right level of analysis—at the level of the individual, the group or at a societal level—and an understanding that the individual level is not always the most appropriate. For example, the social identity approach (Tajfel & Turner,  1979 ; Turner et al.,  1987 ) provides a clear framework to examine how our group memberships, and the contexts in which we are embedded, may impact upon our attitudes and behaviours, particularly at work (Haslam,  2004 ).

Third, through concepts like modern sexism (Swim et al., 1995 ), social psychology can provide an understanding of the perniciousness of the denial of sexism and the subsequent outcomes, such as continued gender discrimination and a lack of support for gender equality initiatives (see Begeny et al.,  2020 , 2022 ). This is particularly important as such views provide a strong basis to the backlash that is levelled against gender equality initiatives (Flood et al.,  2021 ). Indeed, more recent theories of sexism, such as the belief in sexism shift (Zehnter et al., 2021 ), indicate that there are increasingly prevalent views that men are now the key victims of sexism (Ryan & Zehnter,  2022 ), a view that is likely to exacerbate resistance to change.

Finally, while not yet an integrated part of social psychology, there are some excellent examples of how to make our research more intersectional (Bowleg,  2017 ; Cole,  2009 ; Rosenthal,  2016 ). This intersectionality can be implemented in terms of the types of research questions we ask and the make‐up of our samples (Purdie‐Vaughns & Eibach,  2008 ; Remedios & Snyder,  2015 ) and even the way we do open science (Sabik et al.,  2021 ). Importantly, while much of the intersectional advances have been made at the intersection of gender and race; there is still much to be done in acknowledging other intersectional identities, such as those based on age, class, disability and sexuality.

Taken together, while the evidence shows us that there have clearly been missteps on the way, the evidence also demonstrates that social psychology is in an excellent position to play an important role as we stride forward towards gender equality.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

All authors declare no conflict of interest.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Landmark articles are, by tradition, single authored papers, but of course the work that is discussed in the paper could only have been conducted in collaboration. Thanks to all my terrific colleagues with whom I've had the pleasure to work with, in particular to Thekla Morgenroth, Chris Begeny, Alex Haslam and Kim Peters whose work contributed significantly to the ideas in this paper. This paper was supported in part by a European Research Council consolidator Grant (725128).

Ryan, M. K. (2023). Addressing workplace gender inequality: Using the evidence to avoid common pitfalls . British Journal of Social Psychology , 62 , 1–11. 10.1111/bjso.12606 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

1 This Landmark Article builds on a short opinion piece I wrote for Nature: Ryan ( 2022 )

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AsPr Kailing Shen

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• Research School of Economics
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• 55 Citations
• 28 Citations

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Kailing Shen is Associate Professor of Economics.  Her research focuses on empirical or policy-related labor market issues. Examples include, but are not limited to, effects of information technology on labour market, unemployment insurance, job search and matching behavior, discrimination, gender differentials, income inequality, higher education, migration, marriage and intergenerational relationship. Kailing’s research is published in a number of leading economics journals including  the Quarterly Journal of Economics ,   Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Development Economics and Journal of Comparative Economics .  Recently, in 2021, she contributed a chapter on "Gender Discrimination" to the Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population.

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PhD in Economics

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Her research focuses on empirical or policy-related labor market issues. Examples include, but are not limited to, effects of information technology on labour market, unemployment insurance, job search and matching behavior, discrimination, gender differentials, income inequality, higher education, migration, marriage and intergenerational relationship. 

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• Professional Occupations Social Sciences 100%
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• Labor Market Economics, Econometrics and Finance 53%
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• Male Workers Economics, Econometrics and Finance 23%
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What Happens When Employers Can No Longer Discriminate in Job Ads?

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Gender Discrimination

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Gender-targeted job ads in the recruitment process: Facts from a Chinese job board

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Measuring the impacts of COVID-19 on job postings in Australia using a reweighting-estimation-transformation approach

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The Age Twist in Employers’ Gender Requests →

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Gender equality at the Olympics is a gold medal victory. But there's still work to do.

The 2024 summer olympics reaching gender parity will be an extraordinary accomplishment, but it should not overshadow the persistent inequities still at play for women throughout the games..

Women athletes have come a long way since the 1900 Paris Olympics , where they were first allowed to compete on the world’s greatest sport stage. They accounted for only 2.2% of all competitors then. Starting Friday, in the same city, women athletes are expected to have the same number of participants as the men. The 50-50 split means that this will be the first-ever Olympics to reach gender parity .

Reaching this significant milestone is no small feat, and it has taken investment at all levels of the sports ecosystem to achieve.

Tuning into the Summer Games and seeing women fiercely compete for podium positions is witnessing the impact of Title IX play out in live action. It is no surprise that since the landmark law’s passage in 1972, we have seen women’s participation at the Games grow steadily, as generations of athletes continue to benefit from its 37 words that changed the trajectory of women’s sports across the globe.

How Title IX helps move Olympics toward equality

Research by our Women’s Sports Foundation has shown that 1,000 athletes (women and men) from more than 100 countries who competed in the 2020 Tokyo Games attended American colleges and universities . The same research also found that Canada’s entire women’s soccer roster that competed in the last Summer Games had attended American institutions.

Title IX’s impact on the Olympics has moved the needle forward on parity, and a few strategic moves by the International Olympic Committee are also helping close the gender gap. In 2018, the IOC approved a Gender Equality Review Project that specifically called out the need to work with international sports federations to reach 50% women athlete participation, which was a goal echoed in the Olympic Agenda 2020+5 .

We were delighted to see these moves because setting goals allows governing bodies to pave a pathway to progress for girls and women in sport.

Afghans competing at Paris Olympics: Taliban have not succeeded in crushing women's sport nor women's spirits

Let us be clear, the 2024 Summer Olympics reaching gender parity will be an extraordinary accomplishment, but it should not overshadow the persistent inequities still at play for women throughout the Games, particularly for para-athletes and coaches.

Although there have been notable strides toward parity in the Paralympics , women athletes continually lag behind their Olympic counterparts. During the 2020 Tokyo Games, women athlete participation compared with men hovered around 42%, while women in the Olympics neared 48%.

Too few women compete in Paralympics

It is disappointing that four years later, women athlete participation in the Paralympics is expected to remain stagnant. Unlike the IOC, the International Paralympic Committee has not set clear goals on how to achieve equality among athletes, and its program overview for Paris shows that women athlete participation will stay put at 42%.

The importance of investing in and actively promoting women athletes with disabilities is critical and cannot be overstated. Staggering data shows that 90% of women with disabilities are not active in sport , and boys with disabilities consistently participate in sport at higher rates than girls with disabilities.

Observing women athletes play, compete and thrive on a global platform, like the Paralympics, can help encourage girls and women with disabilities to come off the sidelines and experience the lifelong benefits of sport participation.

Olympian Simone Biles: My life could have been very different. That's why I'm a voice for others.

Further, the state of play for women in coaching roles throughout the Olympics and Paralympics is woefully lagging. In Tokyo, only 13% of coaches were women . As for the U.S. roster, the percentage is only slightly higher at 21.1%. Of the five Paralympic team sports in which the U.S. women competed, all five were coached by men .

This trend mirrors what is being seen throughout collegiate sports, where there has been a drastic decline of women in head coaching roles – an unfortunate trend following the passage of Title IX as men saw the profitability of coaching women’s sports and over time secured the majority of coaching positions.

Growing the pipeline for women coaches at all levels is vital to ensuring that women make it onto the Olympic Games’ coaching rosters. Gender bias is a systemic issue in collegiate women’s sports and among collegiate women coaches; 80% believe it is easier for men to secure high-level coaching jobs, salary increases and multiyear contracts.

Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store .

Sports is one of the most powerful ways to advance women in society because girls who play go on to become women who lead . To the millions of Americans expected to tune into the Paris Games, there is more that you can do besides cheer.

It is estimated that it will take more than a century for women to achieve equality with men throughout society. But we can help speed up the clock by addressing the inequities on the field of play, in the front office and beyond, and find tangible ways to invest in the ever-evolving world of women’s sports.

Danette Leighton is CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation . Scout Bassett, president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, is a Paralympic track and field athlete.

You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page , on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter .

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August 1, 2024

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Disparity dynamics: Geographic impact of social transfer programs on income inequality

by Fernanda Pires, University of Michigan

Social transfer programs have significant geographic differences in spending that help to reduce income gaps between rich and poor regions of the United States, according to new University of Michigan research.

The study , published in Social Service Review , shows that federal social insurance programs such as Social Security and the Earned Income Tax Credit reduced geographic inequality by 12% in 2019, equivalent to reversing more than 28% of the growth in inequality observed since the 1970s.

Despite being designed without an explicit goal of reducing regional disparities, these programs disproportionately benefit low-income areas. Retirement benefits caused the most significant total reduction in inequality. Spending-adjusted reductions were largest in veterans' benefits, the EITC and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

"Social transfer programs have long been heralded for their individual-level benefits, but their role in reducing regional inequalities has often been overlooked. Given ongoing debates about federal social transfer programs, such as the Child Tax Credit, our findings offer a new dimension for policymakers to consider," said co-author Catalina Anampa Castro, U-M doctoral student in sociology and public policy .

Inequality has risen across the United States, with significant geographic disparities emerging over the past four decades. Early in the period under study, higher incomes were seen in metro areas in the upper Midwest and the rural interior West. However, these areas have experienced relative income declines compared to the rest of the country.

"High levels of inequality and the geographic income gap between areas like San Francisco and rural regions are pivotal challenges facing the U.S.," said co-author Robert Manduca, U-M assistant professor of sociology and faculty affiliate at the Stone Center for Income Dynamics at the Institute for Social Research.

"Examining social insurance programs that were not initially aimed at reducing regional disparities, we found they nonetheless contribute significantly to narrowing these gaps."

Geographic variation in income and transfer spending

In 2019, per capita personal income—comprising market income and transfers—varied widely across the country. The highest income was recorded in the Jackson metropolitan area (Wyoming and Idaho) at $163,370, while Buffalo County (South Dakota) was at the bottom with $15,679. This disparity highlights the substantial economic gap between various regions.

Transfer program spending also showed substantial variation. The Villages, Florida, received the highest per capita transfer spending at $12,316, while the Aleutians West Census Area, Alaska, received the lowest at $2,183.

Transfer spending was higher in rural areas such as the northern Midwest, Appalachia and parts of the rural South, Southwest and Pacific coast. In contrast, metropolitan areas, some rural parts of Texas and the interior West saw lower transfer amounts.

Areas where transfers constituted the highest percentage of local income were often poor but not the poorest, suggesting a nuanced relationship between income levels and transfer reliance.

The study also found a negative correlation between transfer spending and total income. Regions with lower total incomes received higher per capita transfers.

Implications for policy and future research

The research encourages a reevaluation of federal vs. state roles in social welfare programs. Future studies might explore the impact of taxes on geographic inequality and the potential effects of Medicaid spending.

"Our research suggests that expanding federal social transfer programs could further alleviate these regional disparities," said co-author Analidis Ochoa, a U-M doctoral student in sociology and social work.

"There is increasing political tension due to interregional inequality. Additionally, these federally administered programs outperform state-level ones in addressing such inequalities due to consistency in implementation, free from local political influences.

"When states have more discretionary spending , the money is often distributed in more unequal ways because the state diverts funds to whatever the political ideology is at the time."

Understanding these geographic disparities is crucial for policymakers aiming to reduce inequality and improve economic conditions in underserved regions.

"As the economy in parts of the country has gone downhill, we've seen declining upward mobility and increasing health problems," Manduca said. "There's a need for research that ties social and economic conditions together."

Provided by University of Michigan

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Trust in America: Do Americans trust the police?

The relationship between the public and police across the United States was brought into sharp focus over the course of 2020 and 2021 following the high-profile killings of several Black Americans by police, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the worldwide protests that followed. In this episode of our Trust in America video series, our researchers discuss Americans’ trust in police, how views of and experiences with policing vary across political and demographic lines, and how Americans feel about proposals for police reform.

More Trust in America videos

[Intro] Trust in America, in institutions, in each other is essential to the functioning of U.S. democracy. Yet today, trust is declining. So what impact does this have on American society? In this episode, Jocelyn Kiley and Kim Parker help explain trust in police and views of police reforms.

[Jocelyn Kiley] The relationship between the public and police across the country, while not a new issue, was brought into sharp focus over the course of 2020 and 2021. Throughout the summer and fall of 2020, protests around the U.S. put the issue front and center, following the killings of several Black Americans by police, in particular, the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted in the spring of 2021. When we look at public opinion on police and policing in our surveys, we find that views of and experiences with policing vary substantially across political and demographic lines.

[Kim Parker] Yes, in November of 2020, we asked American adults how much confidence they have in police to act in the best interests of the public. And what we found was that most said they have at least some confidence, with 26% saying they have a great deal of confidence. There are a few major fault lines that I would point to in looking at these views, and race and ethnicity is one of them. White adults are much more likely than Black or Hispanic adults to say that they have a great deal of confidence in the police. There are also significant differences by age. Young adults are much less trusting of police than middle-aged and older adults. And the views are also deeply divided by party identification. About four-in-ten Republicans and Republican leaners have a great deal of confidence in the police, and that compares with only 13% of Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic party.

[Jocelyn Kiley] So we know these differences in attitudes can result from a lot of different dynamics, but one is certainly personal experience.

[Kim Parker] We asked people about some of the different ways they may have been discriminated against because of their race or ethnicity across different realms of life. And one of the things that we asked about was whether they had ever been unfairly stopped by the police. What we found was that almost half of Black adults said that this had happened to them, including about two-thirds of Black men. And by comparison, 19% of Hispanic adults and only 9% of white adults said that this has happened to them. And I think these gaps in experience give us some real insight into why Black adults feel the way they do about the police and also why they might want to see changes in the way that police do their jobs.

[Jocelyn Kiley] So in our summer 2020 survey, we found a broad base of support for a number of proposals about policing. The public overwhelmingly backs requiring training in nonviolent alternatives to deadly force, a federal government database to track misconduct allegations. Those are supported by nine in 10 Americans. Also, wide majorities of Americans support giving civilian oversight boards investigative and disciplinary powers and requiring officers to live in the places they police and making chokeholds or strangleholds a crime. These are all proposals that have come up. And while there are demographic differences, such that Black Americans and Democrats are more likely to support these things and the intensity of support is higher, there is a fair amount of support among white Americans and Republicans for all of these things as well. Even as there are differences in how Americans view police, there are also some areas where, at least in the public at large, there’s common ground. One question is, as proposals for change continue to come up at various levels of government, federal, state, local, how will that manifest in public attitudes?

This video cites data from the following research:

• “ Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Other Groups Declines ” Feb. 15, 2022
• “ Majority of Public Favors Giving Civilians the Power to Sue Police Officers for Misconduct ” July 9, 2020
• “ For black Americans, experiences of racial discrimination vary by education level, gender ” May 2, 2019
• “ Race in America 2019 ” April 9, 2019

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Weekly Research Update: Thursday, August 1, 2024

Excel funding support for faculty in the liberal arts, humanities and social sciences opens for 2024-2025 grant cycle

The Office of the Vice President for Research is excited to announce that applications are open for Excel funding for 2025. Excel grants support faculty scholarship and creative output in the liberal arts, humanities and social sciences. Now in its third funding round, the Excel Program is open to faculty at USC Columbia and all Palmetto College campuses. Information regarding specific details and application guidelines are now available . Excel 2025 applications are due Thursday, October 10, 2024. 

Understanding Copyright and Publication Agreements: Safeguard your Research

In the publishing world, transferring copyright is often a necessary step. Recent partnerships between scholarly publishers and technology companies emphasize the importance of understanding your publishing agreements. Publishing agreements impact how your work is utilized: it may be used to train AI models, or there may be restrictions on sharing your research with colleagues, students, and the public.

This one-hour workshop will provide you with strategies for managing your copyright. You will learn how to carefully evaluate publication agreements, negotiate your rights, and select publishers whose policies meet your requirements . Join us to understand how you can control the use and dissemination of your scholarship.

• Thursday, September 19, 2024, 11 am – 12 pm: Register
• Wednesday, October 9, 2024, 1 pm – 2 pm: Register

Get involved with AI Institute activities this fall

The AI Institute at USC will host a series of AI-related learning opportunities for the USC community. Mark your calendars and register at the links below to participate: 

• AI Roundtable Discussions: Each monthly two-hour meeting will feature a panel of experts discussing an AI-related topic suggested by the USC community, followed by a discussion among the broader community of participants and experts.  Offered on the first Friday of each month, starting on September 6, 2024. See the sign-up form for more information . 
• AI-ification: Learn how to integrate modern AI techniques into your research and form new collaborations with AI researchers. Offered the second Friday of each month, starting on September 13, 2024. See the sign-up form for more information .
• AI-athon: Learn how to develop modern ML engines in a one-day hands-on workshop, integrate modern AI techniques into your research, and form new collaborations with AI researchers. Held on the third Friday of each month, starting on September 20, 2024. See the sign-up here for more information .

Notification of policy, requirements and prohibitions of foreign talent recruitment programs 

The Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act of 2022 requires that research funded through federal agencies such as the NSF and NIH disclose all participation and activities involving foreign talent recruitment programs. The policy strictly prohibits participation in any malign foreign talent recruitment program (MFTRP) . USC faculty are encouraged to review details of this policy on the Office of Sponsored Awards Management website .

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