Problem
For centuries, women have been facing educational, legislative, economic and social discrimination on a daily basis. The structural inequality women live with greatly affects their health, well-being and quality of life [1-4,17]. Gender inequality intersects with other factors such as social class, race, ethnicity, religion and age, making the lives of people who live in these intersections even harder [5,6,17]. Violence and discrimination against women ranges from discriminatory regulations and behaviours in public life, harassment on the street to gender-based-violence or femicide [7-9].

Facts & Figures 

• Women spend three times as many hours as men doing unpaid care work at home [3].

• As of January 2020, representation by women in single or lower houses of national parliaments only reached 24.9 per cent [3].

• WHO figures show that about 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime [17].

• An estimated 80% of 50 million people affected by violent conflicts, civil wars, disasters, and displacement are women and children [18].

Solution
There are a plethora of solutions for women's empowerment. Providing women with direct cash transfers, for example, has proven to have a positive impact on their lives and the local economy [11]. Another important solution is to strengthen legal frameworks that promote women’s rights and to continuously improve laws, policies and judicial capacities to become more gender-equitable [12,13]. For women’s empowerment in the workplace, solutions include promoting the professional development of women, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women, and using community initiatives [14,15].

Sources 

1. Gender Inequality and Higher Education (research paper) 

2. Gender inequality and restrictive gender norms: framing the challenges to health (research paper) 

3. United Nations - Goal 5 (link) 

4. Improving health with programmatic, legal, and policy approaches to reduce gender inequality and change restrictive gender norms (research paper) 

5. European Union - The reality of intersectional factors in gender inequality (link) 

6. UN Women - Intersectional feminism: what it means and why it matters right now (link)

7.  WHO - Understanding and addressing violence against women (factsheet) 

8. Worldbank Blogs - Examining the relationship between women’s empowerment and gender-based violence: The case of the Nigeria For Women Project (link) 

9. European Institute for Gender Inequality - Femicide (link) 

10. Role of Smartphones in Women Empowerment (research paper) 

11. Worldbank Blogs - Empowering Women in the world (link) 

12. Improving health with programmatic, legal, and policy approaches to reduce gender inequality and change restrictive gender norms (research paper) 

13. Worldbank - Investing in Girls and Women’s Empowerment in and Beyond the Sahel (press release) 

14. Women's Empowerment Principles (link)

15. Women's Empowerment Principles (flyer) 

16. Progress in women’s representation in top leadership weakens people’s disturbance with gender inequality in other domains (research paper) 

17. WHO - Gender and Health (link) 

18. WHO - Gender and Women's mental health (factsheet)

19. UN Women - SDG 1: End Poverty in all its forms everywhere (link)