Gender Equality
Over the last three decades, Nepal has experienced a demographic shift with declining total fertility rates, population growth, and improvements in life expectancy. Despite these positive shifts, the Nepalese people remain vulnerable to natural disasters, health problems, and economic shocks—45 percent of households in Nepal earn less than $2 a day. A robust social protection… Read more
This blog originally appeared on the Institute of Development Studies website, and was written by Stephen Thompson. In January 2020, a gender and disability workshop was held at IDS as part of the Inclusion Works and Disability Inclusive Development programmes. The aim was to strengthen the inclusion of gender mainstreaming within the disability programmes through raising awareness of gender… Read more
The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has contracted OPM to carry out a scoping study and literature review of gender-sensitive public works. This involves collecting good practices and examples from across the globe, as well as identifying potential areas for intervention (and piloting) in Mozambique. The terms of reference (TOR) for this study required… Read more
The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has contracted OPM to carry out a scoping study and literature review of gender-sensitive public works. This involves collecting good practices and examples from across the globe, as well as identifying potential areas for intervention (and piloting) in Mozambique. This report is a scoping study of the potential… Read more
This annual review assesses the outputs of the Increasing sustainable access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) programme, and how they contribute to expected outcomes and their sustainability. The review also includes updated recommendations for improving integration of gender into WASH programming and assesses the implementation of the… Read more
The main barriers to women’s economic inclusion in Tanzania are: time poverty (because women have to spend so much time on household chores); lack of education; reproductive health pressures; lack of assets and access to financial services; in the case of agriculture – lack of access to male labour and inputs such as fertiliser; in… Read more
Social norms are informal rules and shared social expectations that shape individual attitudes and behaviour (Arias, 2015; Marcus and Harper, 2015). Gender norms are social norms that relate specifically to gender differences. A common gender norm, for example, is that women and girls will and should do the majority of domestic work (Marcus and Harper,… Read more
The current conflict in Yemen, which began in 2015, has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe. As of March 2017, 18.8 million people are in need of humanitarian support, and 10.3 million are in acute need (Sikurajapathy and Al-Fotih, 2017). Women, men, boys and girls have been affected in different ways by the conflict. This rapid… Read more
This study examined the knowledge and practices of adolescent school girls in Kano, Nigeria around menstruation and menstrual hygiene. It argues that the majority had fair knowledge of menstruation, although deficient in specific knowledge areas. Institutionalising sexuality education in Nigerian schools; developing and disseminating sensitive adolescent reproductive health massages targeted at both parents and their… Read more
Menstrual health is one of the major areas of concern in reproductive health affecting a large number of women, starting from their adolescence. Menstrual hygiene and management has direct consequences on fertility and reproductive tract infections respectively. This study aimed to: investigate the availability of sanitary napkins in the operational villages of Block Chinhat in… Read more
The market for menstrual hygiene products in developing countries is expanding rapidly, driven both by private demand and by public efforts to improve girls’ educational outcomes as well as women’s health and dignity. However, many girls and women cannot consistently afford the monthly cost of disposable menstrual products and revert to less hygienic solutions when… Read more