UN Women discussion paper series

The UN Women discussion paper series is an initiative led by the Research and Data Section of UN Women, to provide grounded, fresh and robust perspectives on some of the contemporary challenges to achieving gender equality and women’s rights, and offer insights into policy innovations that are making a difference in women’s lives.

The series is a space for leading feminist researchers to share original, substantive research from different national and regional contexts. Before being published, each paper benefits from an anonymous external peer review process by experts, so that the final product is a high-quality and relevant piece of research that contributes to further scholarship in the field.

Discussion papers

• How does change happen? Social norms, religion and Muslim family laws in the Middle East and North Africa region (2026)
• Women’s agency amid shocks: A gendered analysis of poverty dynamics and the implications for social protection in Bangladesh, Peru and the United Republic of Tanzania (2025)
• Recasting social norms to universalize education for adolescent girls: The Mamidipudi Venkatarangaiya Foundation experience (2024)
• Measuring social norms for gender and development: Lessons and priorities (2024)
• Social norms, gender and development: A review of research and practice (2023)
• Towards improved measures of gender inequality: An evaluation of the United Nations Development Programme’s Gender Inequality Index and a proposal (2022)
• New feminist activism, waves, and generations (2021)
• Paid care work around the globe: A comparative analysis of 47 countries (2021)
• Universal health coverage, gender equality and social protection: A health systems approach (2020)
• Work with men and boys for gender equality: A review of field formation, the evidence base and future directions (2020)
• The digital revolution: Implications for gender equality and women’s rights 25 years after Beijing (2020)
• Democratic backsliding and the backlash against women’s rights: Understanding the current challenges for feminist politics (2020)
• Feminist perspectives on the 2030 Agenda in Ecuador: Selective engagement, inclusions and omissions (2020)
• Transnational families, care arrangements and the state in Costa Rica and Nicaragua (2019)
• Costing of a package of family-friendly transfers and services to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment: An introduction to the calculations and results (2019)
• The effect of cash-based interventions on gender outcomes in development and humanitarian settings (2019)
• Gender equality and women’s rights in the context of child custody and child maintenance: An international and comparative analysis (2019)
• Investing in free universal childcare in South Africa, Turkey and Uruguay: A comparative analysis of costs, short-term employment effects and fiscal revenue (2019)
• A tale of multiple disconnects: Why the 2030 Agenda does not (yet?) contribute to moving German gender equality struggles forward (2019)
• The SDGs and feminist movement building (2018)
• Gender equality and poverty are intrinsically linked: A contribution to the continued monitoring of selected Sustainable Development Goals (2018)
• The evolution of marriage and relationship recognition in western jurisdictions (2018)
• ‘Love is not a passport to Sweden’: Intimate partner violence against migrant women and the proliferation of rights’ statuses (2018)
• Disrupted families: The gendered impacts of family reunification policies on Syrian refugees in Germany (2018)
• Agrarian labour and resources in sub-Saharan Africa: Gender and generational change within family farms, 1980–2015 (2018)
• A contemporary view of ‘family’ in international human rights law and implications for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2017)
• Does group farming empower rural women? The Indian experience (2017)
• Eldercare policies in East Asia and Europe: Mapping policy changes and variations and their implications (2017)
• Neither heroines nor victims: Women migrant workers and changing family and community relations in Nepal (2017)
• Reconfiguring care relationships: Ethiopian migrants in Australia and Lebanon (2017)
• Gender and land dispossession: A comparative analysis (2017)
• Gender analysis of labour market outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa: Recent evidence from Cameroon and Mali (2017)
• Investing in gender-equal sustainable development (2016)
• Gender equality and sustainable development: A pathways approach (2016)
• Financing for gender equality in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (2016)
• Delivering development justice? Financing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2016)
• Towards gender equality through sanitation access (2016)
• The Indian labour market: A gendered perspective (2016)
• Trade liberalization, social policy development and labour market outcomes of Chinese women and men in the decade after China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (2016)
• The gender dimensions of pension systems: Policies and constraints for the protection of older women (2015)
• Child-related financial transfers and early childhood education and care: A review of key developments, impacts and influences in child-related support to families (2015)
• Gender equality and human rights (2015)
• Expanding health-care access in the United States: Gender and the patchwork “universalism” of the Affordable Care Act (2015)
• Economic growth and social reproduction: Gender inequality as cause and consequence (2015)
• Falling through the net? Gender and social protection in the Pacific (2015)
• Are governments catching up? Work–family policy and inequality in Latin America (2015)