Pay Equity and Women’s Wage Increases: Success in the States, a Model for the Nation

By 1989, twenty states had implemented programs to raise the wages of workers in female-dominated job classes in their state civil services. A study of these pay equity programs, conducted by the Institute for Women\u27s Policy Research and the Urban Institute, found that all twenty states were successful in closing the female/male wage gap without substantial negative side effects such as increased unemployment. The extent to which the states succeeded depended on many factors including how much money was spent, the proportion of women affected, and the standard to which female wages were raised. As women\u27s responsibilities for their families\u27 wellbeing increase, it is important to explore policies to raise women\u27s wages to levels that are free from discrimination or cultural devaluation. An American woman working full-time year-round in 1992 earned only 71 percent as much as her male counterpart. 1 This represents a substantial increase since 1982 when the wage ratio of female to male earnings was 62 percent. Approximately half of this increase is due to an increase in women\u27s real wages, 2 while the other half is due to a decrease in men\u27s real wages. 3 Despite this considerable advance, the wage gap remains; women still earn less than men even in the same occupations. 4 When different jobs of comparable worth--those requiring similar levels of skill, effort, responsibility, or knowledge--are compared it is even more common to find pay inequities. 5 The persistence of the wage gap compels attention for two ..

Evaluation of the 2012 family violence amendments: synthesis report

This report sets out the overall findings of the evaluation of the 2012 family violence amendments. The evaluation examined the effects of amendments to the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth)  that were intended to improve the family law system’s responses to matters involving family violence and safety concerns. Key messages Most separated parents don’t use family dispute resolution, lawyers or courts to resolve parenting matters after they separate Those parents who do use family law systems tend to be those affected by complex issues including family violence, mental ill-health, substance abuse and safety concerns for themselves and/or their children There has been an increased emphasis on identifying families with concerns about family violence and child abuse, however 29% of parents using family law system services reported never being asked about family violence or safety concerns Family law professionals indicated that better screening tools and approaches are required The reforms have supported sorting out parenting arrangements by agreement. This is likely to be due to a change in 2012 that means advisors tell parents that parenting arrangements should be in a child’s best interests Subtle changes in parenting arrangements are evident such as more parents with safety concerns reporting a shift away from overnight stays with fathers The proportion of children with court orders for shared care, where allegations of both family violence or child safety had been raised, fell after the reforms (from 19% to 11%) The proportion of court orders for shared care where neither family violence nor child safety was raised remained stable (22%): no significant change showed where only one issue was raised (17% pre-reform, 15% post-reform). Overall the main findings of the evaluation indicate that the 2012 family violence amendments are a step in the right direction in a reform agenda intended to improve the system’s response to family violence and child abuse concerns in post-separation parenting arrangements. See related content for seperate reports.   &nbsp

The Story of Family to Family: The Early Years (1992-2006) of an Initiative to Improve Child Welfare Systems

Outlines the crisis in child welfare systems and the development of Casey's initiative to increase the agencies' frontline capacity, prioritize reunification, and provide neighborhood-based foster care. Reviews strategies, intended outcomes, and results

Call for Participatory Decision Making: Discussion Paper on World Bank-Civil Society Engagement

This paper explores the opportunities for more meaningful, empowering forms of participation in World Bank decision-making. First, it examines the challenges of improving public participation in the Bank's institutional governance, and in its operations at global, national, and local levels. Then, it proposes a set of principles and a framework for thinking about how to expand and deepen the opportunities for meaningful public participation in all stages of Bank decisionmaking. Finally, it uses the framework to propose a set of recommendations for improving Bank practice for consideration by the World Bank's management and Board

Monitoring and Evaluation at the sector level Experiences from Joint Sector Reviews in the education sectors of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger

Aid policy and practice have been thoroughly shaken up over the past few years. One of the crucial reform areas relates to monitoring and evaluation (M&E). In short, aid recipients are asked to elaborate sound, results-oriented frameworks while donors are expected to harmonise and align their own policies and frameworks. Evidence has revealed that implementation on the ground is slow. This discussion paper examines the extent to which joint sector reviews (JSRs) could take the M&E reform agenda forward. JSRs are M&E exercises at the sector level which have the potential to satisfy the existing M&E needs of various stakeholders while, at the same time, also contributing to the M&E reform agenda. They are increasingly utilised on the ground, yet, so far, there do not exist any systematic stocktakings and/or analyses of them. Our own analysis of a sample of JSRs from the education sectors of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger indicate that JSRs score highly on harmonisation, coordination, leadership and broad-based participation; but poorly on alignment. They generally prioritise accountability over learning needs; focus more on implementation than results; and largely neglect accountability and learning at the level of the sector institutional apparatus (including the M&E system). In this paper, findings from the field are contrasted with insights from evaluation theory and practice so as to provide suggestions for on the ground JSR improvements.

Strengthening Agricultural Innovation Capacity: Are Innovation Brokers the Answer?

This paper examines the role of innovation brokers in stimulating innovation system interaction and innovation capacity building, and illustrates this by taking the case of Dutch agriculture as an example. Subsequently, it reflects upon the potential role of innovation brokers in developing countries' agriculture. It concludes that innovation brokerage roles are likely to become relevant in emerging economies and that public or donor investment in innovation brokerage may be needed to overcome inherent tensions regarding the neutrality and funding of such players in the innovation system. The Dutch experience suggests that innovation brokers need to be contextually embedded, and are unlikely to become effective through a centrally-imposed design. Hence, we conclude that stimulating their emergence requires a policy that supports institutional learning and experimentation. In the evaluation of such experiments, it is important to note that innovation brokers tend to play intangible roles that are not easily captured through conventional indicators.Agriculture, Developing Countries, The Netherlands, Innovation Broker, Neutrality, Institutional Learning, Context-Specific, Innovation Systems, Capacity Strengthening, Agricultural Extension

Sector Wide Approaches to Education - A Strategic Analysis

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

LGBTQ Grantmakers 2008 Report Card on Racial Equity

A research study examining how a subset of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) grantmakers addresses racial equity in grantmaking, governing documents, policies and practices, demographics and leadership, and strategic communications

Beyond knowledge brokerage: an exploratory study of innovation intermediaries in an evolving smallholder agricultural system in Kenya

The recognition that innovation occurs in networks of heterogeneous actors and requires broad systemic support beyond knowledge brokering has resulted in a changing landscape of the intermediary domain in an increasingly market-driven agricultural sector in developing countries. This paper presents findings of an explorative case study that looked at 22 organisations identified as fulfilling an intermediary role in the Kenyan agricultural sector. The results show that these organisations fulfill functions that are not limited to distribution of knowledge and putting it into use. The functions also include fostering integration and interaction among the diverse actors engaged in innovation networks and working on technological, organisational and institutional innovation. Further, the study identified various organisational arrangements of innovation intermediaries with some organisations fulfilling a specialised innovation brokering role, even as other intermediaries take on brokering as a side activity, while still substantively contributing to the innovation process. Based on these findings we identify a typology of 4 innovation intermediation arrangements, including technology brokers, systemic brokers, enterprise development support and input access support. The results indicate that innovation brokering is a pervasive task in supporting innovation and will require policy support to embed it in innovation support arrangements. The paper is not normative about these arrangements