November 13, 2024
Debates about workers on digital platforms too often focus on male-dominated sectors such as deliveries and ride-hailing. Veronica Deutsch explains how care workers, overwhelmingly women, are now central to the precarious UK gig economy – and sets out what campaigners, researchers, employers and policy makers can do to support them.
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How did female MPs in Kenya convince colleagues to support anti-FGM laws?
May 17, 2024
This post was first published on the Africa at LSE blog The creation of an anti-female genital mutilation law in Kenya shows how men can become supportive of issues that affect women, writes Regina Mwatha. While it may not always seem like men are supportive of women’s agendas, there are three pertinent things to consider when discussing men’s thinking on
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Forgetting Rana Plaza
April 24, 2024
Guest post from Naomi Hossain, from SOAS, on the 11th anniversary of the tragedy in Bangladesh Despite heated and even violent contention around monuments and memorials in recent years, the politics of memory are still seen as largely symbolic. Apparel industry workers can tell you that this is wrong: memorials matter materially. For survivors of the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster,
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GELI Stories – Bringing Stakeholders together to tackle Girls’ Education in Benin
April 2, 2024
In the latest of this series of podcasts with UN and other aid leaders making change happen on the frontline, I talked to Djanabou Mahonde, from UNICEF in Benin, about the power of ‘convening and brokering’ in tackling girls’ rights. Duncan: With me is Djanabou Mahonde from UNICEF Benin, who’s done some really impressive influencing work on girls’ rights there.
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How the pregnancy penalty supercharges global inequality
March 7, 2024
In a blog for International Women’s Day, new parent Anthony Kamande reflects on the heavy cost his partner and family have paid for the simple act of having a baby. In one of the proudest moments of our lives, my wife and I became parents on Valentine’s Day. But for us, as for millions of others having babies across the
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Feminist Climate Justice – what is it and how could it help?
December 11, 2023
Guest post from Laura Turquet, Silke Staab and Constanza Tabbush, all of UN Women By the time you read this, you may know the final result of COP 28 in Dubai, but as of Monday, it doesn’t look very hopeful. Could feminist thinking unlock some of the logjams that continue to frustrate action on the scale and speed that we
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UN Women makes Norm Change central to its mission
November 28, 2023
Bafflingly, I was recently invited to an online ‘Expert Group Meeting’ to help UN Women flesh out a really important new strategy – making norm change central to its role. This from the Concept Note for the session: ‘In recognition of the emerging emphasis on an articulated approach to social norms in international development and acknowledging that discriminatory social norms
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Do our LSE Activism Students know it all already?
October 5, 2023
To get the brain juices of our record number of new LSE activism students flowing last week, we came up with an ‘ice breaker’, albeit on a very serious topic. Although LSE has a pretty comprehensive policy on sexual harassment and sexual violence, it does not currently publish the stats on reporting or resolution of cases. How could a campaign
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How Local Women Mobilizers Shaped Ukraine’s Invasion Response
October 2, 2023
This guest post by Esther Brito Ruiz first appeared on the Global Policy blog. The impacts of Russia’s war in Ukraine have been deeply gendered: from human traffickers targeting women and children fleeing airstrikes, to the increase in gender-based violence, rising feminized poverty, and haunting testimonies of sexual violence. Yet despite these disproportionate vulnerabilities, Ukrainian women have also emerged as vital agents of resistance: as
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Fancy some Good News? Brits are getting nicer.
September 21, 2023
Fancy some good news? A fascinating piece in today’s Guardian outlines the magnitude of the norm shifts that have taken place in the UK after the last 40 years, based on the latest British social attitudes (BSA) survey, which is marking its 40th year of mapping Britain’s cultural and political landscape. Underneath the left-right pendulum shifts of political debate, the
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Top Student Blogs: Are you #ManEnoughToSnip?
August 14, 2023
While most of you (at least in Northern hemisphere) are hopefully enjoying a summer break, or at least a lull, my poor LSE students are trying to finish their dissertations. Thought I’d throw them a bone by putting up some of the best of their blog/vlog assignments on the course I teach with Tom Kirk on ‘Advocacy, Campaigning and Grassroots
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The Gross Domestic Problem: what would a new economic measure that values women and climate look like?
August 3, 2023
Measuring progress by Gross Domestic Product leads straight to gender injustice, austerity and environmental ruin. Anam Parvez Butt and Alex Bush introduce a new Oxfam discussion paper that aims to encourage debate about alternative metrics, and calls on advocates to join the “Beyond GDP” movement Since its official adoption at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, Gross Domestic Product or
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