This report examines recent developments in gender equality in education, employment, entrepreneurship and public life. It contains one overview chapter and 24 short chapters, each with key findings and policy recommendations.

This book is concerned with how the pursuit of national economic competitiveness by states has come to be intertwined with a globalised gender agenda—one in which women and the household economy are seen as ‘untapped’ resources. In many East and Southeast Asian economies, competitiveness and the dangers of the middle-income trap dominate economic policy agendas: states’ commitments to gender equality goals are frequently framed around ‘business case’ logics in which women’s empowerment and women’s increased engagement in the productive economy is linked to the national economic project of building and enhancing competitiveness. This book looks to the case of Malaysia in order to assess how the increasingly dominant view that gender equality is ‘smart economics’ plays out in practice. Drawing upon extensive case study research and interview data, the book hones in on the complex gender politics that are at work within government initiatives that seek to enhance competitiveness via increasing women’s labour force participation, efforts to strengthen marriage and family life, and attempts to boost women’s entrepreneurialism and status within the corporate world. Providing an account of the gender politics at work within ongoing processes of state transformation in Asia, this book will appeal to researchers and students in gender studies, Southeast Asian studies, International Political Economy and public policy.

The presence of women in the practice of medicine extends back to ancient times; however, up until the last few decades, women have comprised only a small percentage of medical students. The gradual acceptance of women in male-dominated specialties has increased, but a commitment to improving gender equity in the medical community within leadership positions and in the academic world is still being discussed. Gender Equity in the Medical Profession delivers essential discourse on strategically handling discrimination within medical school, training programs, and consultancy positions in order to eradicate sexism from the workplace. Featuring research on topics such as gender diversity, leadership roles, and imposter syndrome, this book is ideally designed for health professionals, doctors, nurses, hospital staff, hospital directors, board members, activists, instructors, researchers, academicians, and students seeking coverage on strategies that tackle gender equity in medical education.

During the past decade governments around the globe have introduced institutional mechanisms to promote the advancement of women, including measures to increase women's political participation rates and to incorporate women's interests into policy-making. Why have they done so? How successful have these initiatives been? What are the emerging agendas facing gender equality advocates now? In The New Politics of Gender Equality Judith Squires examines the origins, evolution and key features of three strategies that have been employed across the world in pursuit of gender equality – quotas, policy agencies and gender mainstreaming. The author critically examines each strategy to see how far they transform political institutions and agendas and to what extent they lead rather to the assimilation of women in male-defined structures. Squires argues that a multi-pronged approach, drawing on democratic rather than technocratic strategies, offers the best potential for advancing gender equality. She highlights too the limitations of approaches that ignore inequalities among women and the challenges of developing equality initiatives to address multiple and cross-cutting inequalities between groups. Judith Squires is Professor of Political Theory, University of Bristol. She has written, researched and published widely in the field of gender politics and gender equality.

The status of women in the creative and cultural industries remains precarious. This comparative analysis provides insights from seven key economies to help understand progress towards gender equality in culture and the arts and the broader cultural economy. With empirical and policy analysis spanning Europe and the US, the authors investigate the extent to which gender equality has entered the mainstream along dimensions of leadership, access and awards, pay and pension gaps, work-life balance, and the monitoring of gender equality. While many of the structural barriers have been erased, countries differ significantly in how much gender equality has been achieved in the creative economy and how much female talent is lost and unrecognized. This book is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners across the human and social sciences, especially those involved with arts management and the creative or cultural economy more broadly.

Imagine: You are designing a society, but you don't know who you'll be within it—rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like? This is the revolutionary thought experiment proposed by the twentieth century's greatest political philosopher, John Rawls. As economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler argues in this hugely ambitious and exhilarating manifesto, it is by rediscovering Rawls that we can find a way out of the escalating crises that are devastating our world today. Taking Rawls's humane and egalitarian liberalism as his starting point, Chandler builds a powerful case for a new progressive agenda that would fundamentally reshape our societies for the better. He shows how we can protect free speech and transcend the culture wars; get money out of politics; and create an economy where everyone has the chance to fulfil their potential, where prosperity is widely shared, and which operates within the limits of our finite planet. This is a book brimming with hope and possibility—a galvanizing alternative to the cynicism that pervades our politics. Free and Equal has the potential to offer a touchstone for a modern, egalitarian liberalism for many years to come, cementing Rawls's place in political discourse, and firmly establishing Chandler as a vital new voice for our time.

Korean families are changing fast. While birth rates remain low, Koreans are marrying and starting a family later than ever before, if at all. Couple-with-children households, the dominant household type in Korea until recently, will soon make up fewer than one quarter of all households. These changes will have a profound effect on Korea’s future. Among other things, the Korean labour force is set to decline by about 2.5 million workers by 2040, with potential major implications for economic performance and the sustainability of public finances.

In Frontiers of Gender Equality, editor Rebecca Cook enlarges the chorus of voices to introduce new and different discourses about the wrongs of gender discrimination and to explain the multiple dimensions of gender equality. This volume demonstrates that the wrongs of discrimination can best be understood from the perspective of the discriminated, and that gender discrimination persists and grows in new and different contexts, widening the gap between the principle of gender equality and its realization, particularly for subgroups of women and LGBTQ+ peoples. Frontiers of Gender Equality provides retrospective views of the struggles to eliminate gender discrimination in national courts and international human rights treaties. Focusing on gender equality enables comparisons and contrasts among these regimes to better understand how they reinforce gender equality norms. Different regional and international treaties are examined, those in the forefront of advancing gender equality, those that are promising but little known, and those whose focus includes economic, social, and cultural rights, to explore why some struggles were successful and others less so. The book illustrates how gender discrimination continues to be normalized and camouflaged, and how it intersects with other axes of subordination, such as indigeneity, religion, and poverty, to create new forms of intersectional discrimination. With the benefit of hindsight, the book's contributors reconstruct gender equalities in concrete situations. Given the increasingly porous exchanges between domestic and international law, various national, regional, and international decisions and texts are examined to determine how better to breathe life into equality from the perspectives, for instance, of Indigenous and Muslim women, those who were violated sexually and physically, and those needing access to necessary health care, including abortion. The conclusion suggests areas of future research, including how to translate the concept of intersectionality into normative and institutional settings, which will assist in promoting the goals of gender equality.

In this compelling history of progressive evangelicalism, Brantley Gasaway examines a dynamic though often overlooked movement within American Christianity today. Gasaway focuses on left-leaning groups, such as Sojourners and Evangelicals for Social Action, that emerged in the early 1970s, prior to the rise of the more visible Religious Right. He identifies the distinctive "public theology--a set of biblical interpretations regarding the responsibility of Christians to promote social justice--that has animated progressive evangelicals' activism and bound together their unusual combination of political positions. The book analyzes how prominent leaders, including Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, and Tony Campolo, responded to key political and social issues over the past four decades. Progressive evangelicals combated racial inequalities, endorsed feminism, promoted economic justice, and denounced American nationalism and militarism. At the same time, most leaders opposed abortion and refused to affirm homosexual behavior, even as they defended gay civil rights. Gasaway demonstrates that, while progressive evangelicals have been caught in the crossfire of partisan conflicts and public debates over the role of religion in politics, they have offered a significant alternative to both the Religious Right and the political left.