Gender-Equitable Family Policies for Inclusive and Sustainable Development: An Agenda for the G20

Gender-Equitable Family Policies for Inclusive and Sustainable Development: An Agenda for the G20

AUTHOR(S)
Elena Camilletti; Ramya Subrahmanian; Dominic Richardson; A K Shiva Kumar; Rosario Esteinou; Lauren Whitehead

Published: 2023 Policy Brief

Task Force 6: Accelerating SDGs: Exploring New Pathways to the 2030 Agenda

The G20 aims to promote global cooperation, inclusive development, economic stability, and sustainable growth. This presents an opportunity to leverage its leadership to ensure foundational investments in gender-equitable family well-being globally. Family policies, such as childcare services and parental leave, can reduce poverty, promote decent jobs for women, support more equal intra-familial relationships, and secure child well-being and development outcomes, thereby benefitting societies and economies. To achieve this, family policies need to be designed in a gender-equitable way, and be integrated, coordinated, and financed through sustainable domestic resources. This policy brief proposes an agenda and recommendations to G20 countries to invest in gender-equitable family policies that can deliver optimally for child well-being, gender equality, and sustainable development.

Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis: A 2023 Global Outlook

Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis: A 2023 Global Outlook

AUTHOR(S)
UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight

Published: 2023 Innocenti Publications

This report outlines the polycrisis in which the world finds itself — multiple, simultaneous shocks with strong interdependencies, intensified in an ever-more integrated world — along with eight trends that will shape child rights and well-being in the coming year. The trends explored are: 

 

  1. The pandemic's harms will continue to be counted - but reforms of health architecture and medical breakthroughs offer hope for children.
  2. Efforts to tame inflation will have unintended negative effects on child poverty and well-being - requiring policy measures that protect investments for vulnerable families and children.
  3. Multiple factors will contribute to continued food and nutrition insecurity - with increasing calls for greater climate adaptation and food systems reform to prevent food poverty in children.
  4. The worsening energy crisis may cause immediate harm to children - but the focus on energy sustainability provides hope for a greener future.
  5. Unmet needs and underinvestment in children warrant reforms of financial flows to developing countries - while renewed attention on climate finance and debt relief holds promise.
  6. Threats to democratic rights such as freedom of expression are expected to continue - but social movements, including those led by young people and women, are likely to push back.
  7. Increasing factionalism will put further stress on multilateralism - but efforts to address children's and young people's concerns may offer opportunities to find common ground.
  8. The internet will continue to fragment and become less global, resulting in further disparities for children - prompting a greater push for openness, fairness and inclusion.

 

Tackling Gender Inequality from the Early Years: Strategies for building a gender-transformative pre-primary education system

Tackling Gender Inequality from the Early Years: Strategies for building a gender-transformative pre-primary education system

AUTHOR(S)
Dita Nugroho; Mayra Delgado; Bella Baghdasaryan; Stefania Vindrola; Divya Lata; Ghazala Mehmood Syed

Published: 2022 Innocenti Research Report
Access to early childhood education has increased over the last two decades, with global enrolment rates showing gender parity in access among boys and girls. Despite this gender parity in access, the pre-primary education system does not always deliver on its potential to tackle gender inequities and address harmful gender stereotypes while they are being absorbed by the youngest learners. As such, this research explores the ways in which pre-primary education can become more gender-transformative at a system level and presents 11 key strategies to support this goal. The strategies are organized around five interconnected action areas: planning and budgeting; curriculum; workforce development; family and community engagement; and quality assurance. These strategies can help governments and policymakers to proactively incorporate gender-responsiveness into the design and implementation of their pre-primary education policy and programming, following a system-wide perspective.
Gender-Transformative Pre-Primary Education: Addressing gender inequalities through early years education

Gender-Transformative Pre-Primary Education: Addressing gender inequalities through early years education

Published: 2022 Innocenti Research Briefs
Access to pre-primary education has increased significantly in the past two decades and, as of today, boys and girls are participating equally. However, despite this gender parity in access, the pre-primary education system does not always deliver on its potential to tackle gender inequalities and address harmful gender stereotypes and norms. In particular, children begin to gain insight into certain cultural gender stereotypes as early as the ages of two and three. There is, therefore, a need to proactively incorporate gender-responsive and gender-transformative strategies into the design and implementation of pre-primary education systems to address gender inequalities. 
Analyse méthodologique pour la recherche Data Must Speak: Enseignements tirés de l’approche modèle positive, des sciences comportementales, de la recherche sur la mise en oeuvre et de la science de la mise à l’échelle

Analyse méthodologique pour la recherche Data Must Speak: Enseignements tirés de l’approche modèle positive, des sciences comportementales, de la recherche sur la mise en oeuvre et de la science de la mise à l’échelle

AUTHOR(S)
Lorena Levano Gavidia; Cirenia Chavez; Alvaro Fortin; Luca Maria Pesando; Renaud Comba

Published: 2022 Innocenti Research Report

La pandémie a aggravé une crise de l'apprentissage et mis en péril les objectifs mondiaux. Et pourtant, même dans les contextes éducatifs les plus difficiles, certaines écoles obtiennent de meilleurs résultats que d'autres, situées dans des contextes similaires et avec un niveau de ressources équivalent. Pourquoi ces écoles exceptionnelles, connues sous le nom d'écoles "modèles positives", obtiennent-elles de meilleurs résultats en matière d'apprentissage, de rétention, d'équité et d'égalité des sexes ?

Data Must Speak (DMS) - une initiative mondiale mise en œuvre depuis 2014 - vise à combler les lacunes en matière de preuves tangibles pour atténuer la crise de l'apprentissage en utilisant les données existantes. Le volet recherche de DMS est cocréé avec les ministères de l'éducation. Il s'appuie sur des méthodes mixtes pour générer des connaissances, parallèlement à des enseignements pratiques sur ce qui fonctionne, pourquoi et comment mettre à l'échelle des solutions de terrain pour les décideurs politiques nationaux et la communauté internationale dans le domaine de l'éducation.

La recherche utilise des approches innovantes et complémentaires telles que l’approche modèle positive, des sciences comportementales, de la recherche sur la mise en œuvre et de la science de la mise à l'échelle pour identifier et mettre à l'échelle les comportements et les pratiques des écoles "modèles positives". Cette revue méthodologique présente les définitions, concepts et méthodologies clés de ces approches afin de guider et d'informer le développement et la mise en œuvre de la recherche DMS au niveau national. En s'appuyant sur des exemples existants tirés de la recherche sur l'éducation et d'autres domaines, cet revue propose également les meilleures pratiques et les leçons tirées de ces approches qui peuvent être utilisées comme référence commune et langage standard pour leurs applications futures.

La recherche DMS est actuellement mise en oeuvre dans 14 pays: Brésil, Burkina Faso, Tchad, Côte d'Ivoire, Éthiopie, Ghana, Laos, Madagascar, Mali, Népal, Niger, Tanzanie, Togo et Zambie. Elle est cofinancé par KIX (CRDI/GPE), la Fondation Jacobs, la Fondation Hewlett, NORAD, Schools2030, et les resources internes de l'UNICEF.

Best of UNICEF Research 2022

Best of UNICEF Research 2022

AUTHOR(S)
UNICEF Innocenti

Published: 2022 Miscellanea

Best of UNICEF Research showcases the most rigorous, innovative and impactful research produced by UNICEF offices worldwide. While evidence highlights emerging issues, it also informs decisions and provides policy and programme recommendations for governments and partners, to improve children's lives.

This year, Best of UNICEF Research celebrates its 10th edition. It features 12 research projects that the selection panel concurred deserved special recognition for delivering results for children in 2022. How? By informing decision-making, shaping policy, raising public awareness, driving social change, and giving children and young people a voice on the issues that affect them most through participatory research.

These endeavours showcase both the power of innovation in the face of emergency and crisis, and the virtues of agility, endurance and scalability. They also offer solutions and ways to learn from each other. Each piece of research offers a set of adaptable tools: validated methodologies; templates for emergency response plans; methods of monitoring and measuring progress; and examples of successful collaboration between stakeholders. 

 

Promoting Gender-Transformative Change through Social Protection: An analytical approach

Promoting Gender-Transformative Change through Social Protection: An analytical approach

Published: 2022 Innocenti Research Report

Social protection can reduce income poverty and food and economic insecurity, address financial barriers to accessing social services, and promote positive development outcomes throughout the life course – particularly for women and girls. But can it address preexisting gender inequalities through the design, implementation and financing of its programmes?

To strengthen the evidence base ‘what works’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ for social protection to contribute to gender equality, this report proposes and presents an analytical approach to evidence generation on gender-responsive social protection for gender-transformative change. It builds on the Gender-Responsive Age-Sensitive Social Protection (GRASSP) conceptual framework, and on the theoretical, conceptual and empirical literature on gender and social protection. Structured as a socio-ecological framework, our approach presents three interconnected change pathways – at the individual, household and societal level – through which gender-responsive social protection can contribute to gender-transformative results, along with tailored design and implementation features, and underpinned by a set of change levers that existing evidence suggests can strengthen the gender-responsiveness of social protection systems.

A Methodological Review for the Data Must Speak Positive Deviance Research: Insights from Positive Deviance, Behavioural Sciences, Implementation Research and Scaling Science

A Methodological Review for the Data Must Speak Positive Deviance Research: Insights from Positive Deviance, Behavioural Sciences, Implementation Research and Scaling Science

AUTHOR(S)
Lorena Levano Gavidia; Cirenia Chavez; Alvaro Fortin; Luca Maria Pesando; Renaud Comba

Published: 2022 Innocenti Research Report

The pandemic has aggravated a learning crisis and put global goals in jeopardy. And yet, even in the most challenging educational contexts, some schools outperform others located in similar contexts and with an equivalent level of resources. Why do these exceptional schools, known as ‘positive deviant’ schools, achieve improved outcomes in learning, retention, equity and gender equality?

Data Must Speak (DMS) – a global initiative implemented since 2014 – aims to address the evidence gaps to mitigate the learning crisis using existing data. DMS’s research component is co-created with ministries of education. It relies on mixed methods to generate knowledge, alongside practical lessons about ‘what works’, ‘why’ and ‘how to’ scale grassroots solutions for national policymakers and the broader international community of education stakeholders.

The research utilizes innovative and complementary approaches of positive deviance, behavioural sciences, implementation research and scaling science to identify and scale up behaviours and practices of ‘positive deviant’ schools. This methodological review presents key definitions, concepts and methodologies of those approaches to guide and inform the development and implementation of the DMS research at country level. By drawing on existing examples from research on education and other fields, this review also offers best practices and lessons learned from those approaches that can be used as a common reference and standard language for future application.

The DMS research is currently active in 14 countries: Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lao PDR, Madagascar, Mali, Nepal, Niger, Tanzania, Togo, and Zambia. It is co-financed by the Jacobs Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, KIX (IDRC/GPE), NORAD, Schools2030, and internal UNICEF resources.

 

Being intentional about gender-transformative strategies: Reflections and Lessons for UNICEF's Gender and Policy Action Plan (2022-2025)

Being intentional about gender-transformative strategies: Reflections and Lessons for UNICEF's Gender and Policy Action Plan (2022-2025)

Published: 2021 Miscellanea

This compendium brings together six papers on new and emerging gender-related priorities developed by UNICEF staff and external partners, which engage with deepening understanding of the pressing gender challenges children and young people are facing today, and call for more ambitious actions to achieve gender-transformative change and accelerate progress towards gender equality for all children and adults. These papers inform the development of the UNICEF’s new Gender Policy 2021-2030 and Gender Action Plan (GAP) 2022-2025.

Mainstreaming gender into social protection strategies and programmes: Evidence from 74 low- and middle-income countries

Mainstreaming gender into social protection strategies and programmes: Evidence from 74 low- and middle-income countries

AUTHOR(S)
Elena Camilletti; Tara Patricia Cookson; Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed; Rita Sandoval; Silke Staab; Constanza Tabbush

Published: 2021 Innocenti Research Report

The importance of mainstreaming gender into social protection policies and programmes is increasingly recognized. However, evidence on the extent to which this is actually happening remains limited. This report contributes to filling this evidence gap by drawing on the findings of two complementary research projects undertaken by UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti and UN Women in 2019.

Using a specifically developed analytical framework, these two projects reviewed 50 national social protection strategies and 40 social protection programmes across a total of 74 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to assess the extent to which they incorporate gender equality concerns.

Key Findings on Families, Family Policy and the Sustainable Development Goals: Synthesis Report

Key Findings on Families, Family Policy and the Sustainable Development Goals: Synthesis Report

AUTHOR(S)
Dominic Richardson

Published: 2018 Innocenti Research Report
This synthesis report, ‘Families, Family Policy and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Key Findings’ explores how the role of families, and family policies from around the world, can contribute to meeting the SDG targets. Given the key role families and family policies play in determining social progress, and in view of the national and international focus on meeting the SDGs by 2030, the timing of this publication is opportune. The report summarizes evidence across the six SDGs that cover poverty, health, education, gender equality, youth unemployment, and ending violence. It highlights important issues that policy makers may wish to consider when making future policies work for families, and family policies work for the future. Given the broad scope of the SDG ambitions, a key contribution of this work is to map how the successes of family-focused policies and programmes in one SDG have been successful in contributing to positive outcomes in other SDG goal areas.
Children’s Involvement in Housework: Is there a case of gender stereotyping? Evidence from the International Survey of Children's Well-Being

Children’s Involvement in Housework: Is there a case of gender stereotyping? Evidence from the International Survey of Children's Well-Being

AUTHOR(S)
Zlata Bruckauf; Gwyther Rees

Published: 2017 Innocenti Research Briefs

Evidence from national studies in developed and developing countries suggests that girls spend more time on housework. The most common explanation relates to behaviour modelling as a mechanism of gender role reproduction: children form habits based on parental models. This brief shows that participation in household chores is an essential part of children’s lives. There is a common pattern of a gender gap between boys’ and girls’ daily participation in housework across a diverse range of socio-economic and cultural contexts in 12 high-income countries. The persistence of this gap points to gender stereotyping – a form of gender role reproduction within a family that potentially can reinforce inequalities over the life-course.

 

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