Oxfam’s research team is looking for a gender justice researcher. Closing date is Monday (30th May), so despite 
having only one typing hand (bike accident, not nice), Deborah Hardoon explains why you should apply
In 1990 Amartya Sen wrote an editorial for the NY Times review of books that highlighted a numerical discrepancy with profound implications. He looked at data on birth rates – all over the world there are around 105 or 106 male children for every 100 female children. This is just the biology of reproduction. After birth, given the same amount of care and nutrition, girls do better than boys – we are hardier, better at resisting disease and live longer. As a result in Europe, Japan and the US, there are about 105 women for every 100 men. However in parts of Asia and North Africa, women do not fair so well. In China there were just 94 women for every 100 men and in the Indian state of Punjab, just 86 women. Sen calculated that the difference between the gender ratios in countries where men and women generally receive equal treatment and the ratio in parts of South Asia, West Asia, and North Africa. More than 100 million women are “missing.” The cause was a combination of selective abortion and neglect.
‘These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women’ he concluded.
Sen’s path-breaking work exemplifies the value of gathering and analysing data that is both disaggregated by gender and that measures what really matters. We have plenty of evidence of discrimination and the abuse of women’s rights. From graphic examples of gender based violence and rape to economic and political exclusion and everyday sexism experienced by women and girls. This sort of evidence and the associated stories of the people affected paint a picture of a world in which women continue to face injustice on many levels. Beyond brining these injustices to life, we also know that quantifying issues is incredibly useful – for spotting trends and associated causes/effects, but also for communicating the scale and depth of issues using stark statistics. By revealing and naming, scrutiny and action become possible.
We live in a world today where data, Big and small, can tell us everything from how much a government spends on each department to the next book we are going to read. So it is incredibly frustrating that despite the fact that we recognise that there is a gender pay gap and very few women make it to the top, at the national level we still don’t really know what the income differences are between men and women, nor how much decision-making power men and women have over how their household income is spent nor if trends are getting better/worse. This is because income and asset ownership is generally measured at the household (not individual) level. Bad data and tenuous extrapolations can be unhelpful and undermining, some gender related stats have been particularly contentious.
Which is why there is a huge need for better data, as recognised by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s new commitment to spend $80 million to plug the gender data gap. But data alone isn’t enough. We also need great researchers and analysts to dig into the data we have, inform the development of new indicators and methodologies to measure what matters and communicate that widely, particularly making the data come alive, demonstrating what it really means for women and girls.
That is why we are currently recruiting for such a person. We are looking for a skilled researcher who is great with numbers and looking to apply this to issues of gender justice. This will involve exploring how to measure and analyse empowerment and exploring women’s rights issues, particularly from a quantitative perspective, in both our programme work on the ground and campaigns on Rights in Crisis, Inequality and Climate Justice. If this sounds like you, please apply by May 30th.