UN Women introduces new discussion paper series featuring cutting-edge papers by leading feminist researchers

What does it take to achieve gender equality and make women’s rights real? What kinds of policies are needed to make the economy work for women? How can we ensure that policies and programmes on sustainable development advance rather than constrain gender equality?

Despite some progress, the gap in evidence-based knowledge around gender equality and women’s empowerment hinders efforts to find answers to these questions.

A new UN Women discussion paper series will provide fresh, grounded 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 peer-reviewed series aims to make the best of feminist knowledge accessible to the multiple actors who make and shape policies, to animate public debate on key issues of concern and to enhance the quality of feminist research through critical feedback and policy dialogue.

The discussion paper series opens on the heels of the launch of Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2016: Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights, to highlight some of the ground-breaking work by leading experts commissioned exclusively for UN Women’s flagship report. This comprehensive body of research forms the foundation that the report is built on, and the series offers an opportunity to showcase key papers that have been a part of this effort.

We kick off this series with a paper that explores the connection between gender equality and human rights, and three further studies which show how, even in a time of economic crisis and fiscal austerity, some governments have increased access to social protection and services, with important potential impacts for the rights and opportunities of women and girls.

• In “Gender Equality and Human Rights”, Sandra Fredman and Beth Goldblatt introduce a four-dimensional framework to achieve substantive equality. They demonstrate how this approach, which we draw upon in UN Women’s Progress of the World’s Women report, can be used as a tool to assess the impact of policies on women and advance gender equality.
• In “The Gender Dimensions of Pension Systems: Policies and Constraints for the Protection of Older Women”, Camila Arza documents the pervasive problem of income insecurity in old age that women face across a large number of countries. She also points to a number of important policy measures that can be taken to address gendered pension gaps.
• In “Expanding Healthcare Access in the United States: Gender and the patchwork 'universalism' of the Affordable Care Act”, Randy Albelda and Diana Salas explore the gender implications of recent US health reforms, arguing that while they fall short of universal coverage and in fulfilling a commitment to health care as a human right, they will expand access to basic health care services, especially for women, in important ways.
• In “Child-related Financial Transfers and Early Childhood Education and Care: A review of key developments, impacts and influences in child-related support to families”, Mary Daly examines the emerging trends in providing child-related transfers and early childhood education and care services, while tracing the associated outcomes for gender and other types of inequalities within and across countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.