Women's Economic Empowerment: Key Issues and Policy Options

The central argument of the paper is organised around the limits to markets as a means of overcoming ?durable inequalities' which reflect long-established power relations and the need for public action by states and civil society to address these underlying causes. The paper sketches out a number of areas where policies could make a difference, including a difference on the terms on which women can participate in, contribute to and benefit from processes of economic growth. In addition, the paper suggests a number of cross-cutting interventions which would promote the effectiveness of each of these areas: the importance of collective capabilities to promote women's participation in civil society and politics; research and information to track progress; and financial resources necessary to achieve this progress

Unemployment: The Coming Storm, Who Gets Hit, Who Gets Hurt, and Policy Remedies

While recent forecasts have pointed to an employment shock of a similar magnitude to that seen in the previous Great Recession, many of the circumstances this time round suggest we may be facing a more severe experience. This is likely to disproportionately affect young people, those from deprived families both in adulthood and in childhood, ethnic minorities, and those with low levels of education. Evidence shows that there are long-term costs to spells out of work, including reduced employment opportunities and wages, alongside lower job satisfaction, health and happiness. A combined response of macro-level interventions, alongside individually-targeted education, skills and active labour market policy responses are required. Targeted cuts to National Insurance, changing the incentives of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), increasing access courses to higher education, funding further education routes, and combined interventions including targeted job support schemes and high quality work placements are all policies that can aid recovery and minimise the costs of scarring

Inequalities within Couples: Market Incomes and the Role of Taxes and Benefits in Europe

In spite of there being few elements of tax or cash benefit systems in developed countries that are any longer explicitly gender-biased in a discriminatory sense, it is well recognised that they have significant gender effects. To the extent that women earn less than men on average under tax-benefit systems that are progressive, there is some redistribution from men to women overall. However, an aggregate perspective is insufficient for understanding how earning opportunities and public policies affect living arrangements at the family level in general and the circumstances of men and women in particular. Arguably, it is within the household that a gendered division of labour is most relevant. It is difficult to observe how income and other resources get allocated within households. We can, however, observe the incomes brought into the household and to what extent taxes and benefits mitigate (or indeed exacerbate) any inequality of income between men and women. We explore the effects of tax and benefit systems on differences in income and in incentives to earn income between men and women within couples in a selection of the member countries of the European Union (EU) using EUROMOD, the EU tax-benefit microsimulation model. This comparative perspective allows us to establish the relative effects of different policy regimes, given the underlying characteristics of each national population, using a consistent approach and set of incidence assumptions across countries.within-household inequality, tax-benefit systems, Europe, gender

Analysis of relations between 'Equality of Life Chances' and 'Early Childhood Care and Education', as foundations for social justice and human development : a case study of Mauritius

The research looks at relations between equality of life chances and early childhood care and education. It explores how normative interpretations of equality shape early childhood policies, through a review of contemporary egalitarian philosophy as well as through discourse analysis of international organisations. In addition a case study on Mauritius is conducted through quantitative analyses of a longitudinal database and also a qualitative study involving parents

Inequalities in late adolescents’ educational experiences and wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic

While the health risks of Covid-19 for young people are low, they have borne a heavy cost of the pandemic through intense disruption to their education and social lives. These effects have not been experienced equally across social and demographic groups. Using data from a nationally representative survey of 4,000 young people in England linked to their education records, we study inequalities in late adolescents’ experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic. We find particularly stark inequalities by socio-economic status, with those from poorer families facing disadvantage on multiple fronts, particularly in their experiences of home learning, returning to school, and exam cancellations compared to their more advantaged peers. Gender and ethnic inequalities were more mixed, though young females reported significantly lower wellbeing scores than males. This evidence suggests that the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities, meaning policymakers concerned with increasing equity and social mobility now face an even bigger task than before

Educational Opportunities in Indonesia: Are Factors Outside Individual Responsibility Persistent Over Time?

Not all sources of inequality in educational achievements are fair. But how strong and persistent is the burden of unequal opportunities that each person carries on in their life? In this paper, we define individual indices of the burden of circumstances, which measure the effect that the accumulation of factors outside individual control, has on individual educational achievements in the short and long run. As our findings suggest, the effect of these circumstances tends to persist over time. This effect has been particularly strong for the generation of students who experienced the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Lastly, we do not find evidence of a sizeable effect of local non-routine education expenditure on the inequality of opportunity, causing us to question the effectiveness of educational policies in accurately targeting equity

Briefing No. 7 - Attainment and Assessment

Pupils from independent schools were much more likely to report that their Teacher Assessed Grades (TAGs) were higher than they expected (43%) than those in state schools (34% for those in state grammars and 29% in state comprehensives). They were also much less likely to report that they were lower than they expected (at 7%, compared to 15% of those in state grammars and 23% in state comprehensives). A third of young people reported that they felt that teachers were biased against certain groups in their teacher assessment. This figure was higher among those from ethnic minority backgrounds and lower among those with more socio-economically advantaged backgrounds. Pupils who had particularly disrupted experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic received lower GCSE Teacher Assessed Grades (TAGs) than their peers whose disruption was more moderate. One-to-one or small group tutoring as catch-up provision was most likely to be offered to those from less advantaged backgrounds and those who had lower prior attainment. Boys were more likely to be offered tutoring but, as they were less likely to take it up, there was no gender difference in reported receipt of tutoring. Those who received one-to-one and small group tutoring appeared to perform slightly better in their GCSE TAGs than their peers who were offered this tutoring but did not take it up. However, only just over a quarter of the sample reported that they have received one-to-one or small group tutoring, meaning it is unlikely to have made a big difference to learning lost at the cohort level