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Social Norms and Women's Empowerment

Seminar description:

This 2-hours seminar/webinar explored the role that social norms play in dictating women's choices, access to jobs, and in the impact of policies and programs intended to encourage women's labour force participation. While women and girls' access to education and healthcare has been consistently improving over time, this has not translated into gains in the labour market. Women remain stuck in low quality, informal work, responsible for the vast majority of unpaid work and care responsibilities, and even policies and programs specifically designed to promote gender equality often come up short in results.

Norms are context specific, difficult to identify, and difficult to measure, and yet they have significant impacts on women's lives. A diverse panel of experts from the worlds of international development research, policy and practice discussed the role of social norms in their experience as researchers and practitioners working on women's economic empowerment in low-income countries, and that way those norms shaped not only the lives of women but their own work.

This is the fifth in a series of eight research-to-practice training seminars/webinars on women's empowerment organized by the WED Lab in partnership with Canada's International Development Research Centre.

Featured panelists will include:

  • Kathleen Fallon (Stony Brook University) (Facilitator)
  • Martha Melesse (International Development Research Centre)
  • Doris Buss (Carleton University)
  • Diana Sarosi (Oxfam Canada)

Suggested readings on this topic: