UNRISD’s new gender justice and development research programme aims to deepen understanding of the structural causes of gender inequality, and to propose political and policy options to UN member states and the development community more generally. The programme name reflects a focus on the concept of gender justice, which includes the question of redress for past injustices within the current discussions of empowerment. A recognition that the lives of men and women are intersected by other inequalities, such as class, race, sexual orientation, gender identity and age, among others, guides work undertaken in the programme.

Gender equality and women's empowerment (GEWE) at UNRISD is a shared responsibility and we all take it very seriously. For instance, our Director Paul Ladd is an active International Gender Champion who has committed to make gender equality a working reality. Gender equality is critical to UNRISD's mission of ensuring that social equity, inclusion and justice are central to development thinking, policy and practice. And all research coordinators ensure that gender considerations are integrated in research. Thus, we all share the responsibility of promoting GEWE and while I lead a programme that focuses specifically on Gender Justice and Development, everyone is accountable for GEWE. 

UNRISD’s emerging work on COVID-19 distinguishes itself from other studies by also asking how women felt about the pandemic. Analysis of women’s subjective experience and agency has always been a concern of feminism, and going forward at UNRISD we want to cover women’s subjective experiences of their lives, which are as important as the material effects they experience. 

For instance, during the lockdowns there was an increase in remote working that, in many cases, coincided with home-based schooling, producing an emotional overload: children kept indoors all day resulted in anxiety, boredom, moments of aggression and tears, which in turn produced desperation and feelings of guilt among their primary careers, many of whom were women. To analyze how it felt To Live, Work, Care and Die in Times of COVID-19, UNRISD is producing four think pieces by eminent thinkers from Ibero-America. This mini-series reveals the unexpected leading role played by emotions, care work, people’s dependence on each other, and crucially the need for an intersectional perspective.

As well as exposing the crisis of care and the fragility of institutions providing care services, the pandemic also confronted us with the fact that little progress has been made in sharing the responsibility for care more equitably between women and men. At UNRISD, we are convinced more than ever that it is fundamental to start working more seriously with men and masculinities. 

Why work with men? Because while we have made important inroads in terms of legislation and policies, we have been less successful in changing culture. Cultural processes of change can be very slow, and we should think more seriously about men’s active involvement in the private sphere in terms of looking after children and doing an equal share of domestic chores. We haven’t talked much about that in policy circles. We need to think about how we change the codes of masculinity and femininity and how we change men’s ideas about being the bold heroes in the workplace while cooking and other domestic work is for the weak or the unemployed. There are men who are willing to change but they need incentives and support in social discourse in order to feel legitimate. If we talk publicly about these mandates of the masculine and feminine, we will find that more people are shifting, changing.

Ultimately, UN-SWAP is the most important benchmark against to which measure our progress and our commitment towards gender equality. We certainly use it as an accountability measure, including in our governance structures - with the UNRISD Board for example. And we are very proud to have performed extremely well in our first UN-SWAP. This is the first year we completed the exercise and we were extremely pleased when we realized how well we are doing.

First of all, we would like to showcase that organizations can make gender equality a day-to-day reality in all processes. Of course, it takes time and at UNRISD we have had a strong commitment towards GEWE for over 30 years. I believe UN-SWAP has supported substantial and sustained improvement in the UN’s performance on mainstreaming gender, it also raises the bar for accountability by strengthening existing indicators and anchoring the framework within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

Extended reading of UNRISD

Projects: 

• Social Care in Mexico: Assessment and Prospects
• VoiceIt: Strengthening LGBTQI+ Voices in Politics

Events:

• Promoting Evidence-based Policies in the Global Alliance of Care
• UNRISD at LASA 2021 Virtual Congress: Crisis global, desigualdades y centralidad de la vida
• A New Global Norm on Violence Against Women

Recent gender think pieces:

• At UNRISD: We Care about Care (March 2022), by Francisco Cos-Montiel
• Why Intersectionality is Critical for UNRISD's Work (June 2021), by Francisco Cos-Montiel and Carolyn H. Williams