Editor’s choice
This programme aims to deepen SEI’s engagement with issues of gender and social equality in the context of development, foster collaborations, and strengthen our capacity in this field.
Feature / SEI's Dr Resurrección won the 2019 Mary Fran Myers Gender and Disaster Award.
There are vital interconnections between gender, social equity, environment and development. Environmental change can affect different social groups in different ways: women and men, rich and poor, specific ethnic and age groups, people in developed and developing countries.
Patterns of development and economic growth that neglect the needs of specific groups of people can exacerbate disparities, stratifying people into losers and winners, worsening living conditions and creating unjust outcomes. A deliberate focus on gender and social equality in development can help achieve more inclusive benefits, and enhance human and environmental well-being.
SEI has long engaged with these issues in its research, but often not in a focused, sustained and explicit manner. This programme aims to enhance SEI’s capacity to engage in research and policy with a view to transforming gender, social and power relations to ensure more equitable outcomes.
Our starting point is that unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, amplified by disparate distribution of decision-making power, are putting enormous pressure on natural resources and also worsening poverty and inequality, with particularly serious impacts on people who depend on natural resources for their livelihoods and survival.
The Programme’s core objective is to address knowledge and policy gaps related to gender and social equality in order to inform and advance sustainable development policy. Our work packages and activities focus on three main tasks:
1. Mainstreaming gender and social equality issues within SEI’s projects, themes, initiatives and operations, including model-based policy analysis, to strengthen SEI’s internal capacity for gender- and equity-sensitive research for policy wherever possible;
2. Providing opportunities for new research projects with a gender and social equality lens; and
3. Consolidating findings and insights in order to communicate them to relevant stakeholders, boundary partners and change agents to enable solutions for empowerment and transformative governance.
The Programme’s three functions are closely integrated. New research projects will inform and in turn reflect the approaches and procedures developed for mainstreaming gender and social equality in SEI research and methods. Communications and knowledge-sharing will be built into all activities, to foster dialogue within SEI and with our boundary partners, and to ensure that our work reaches and is relevant to policy-makers and other stakeholders.
The three new research projects being funded in Phase 1 focus on the role of social factors and gender in small and mid-size businesses’ sustainability agendas; the gender pay gap in Estonia’s agriculture and forestry sectors; and the development of gender-based indicators to track progress on food security.
Download a 2-page overview of the Programme (PDF, 839kb)
Perspective / How can researchers better integrate gender equality and social equity analysis in their work? Perspectives from the SEI Science Forum in Bangkok.
Feature / Experiences in Tanzania and Zambia show the tensions between pursuing much-needed private investment and ensuring that benefits accrue to all citizens.
SEI brief / Do transition policies address the needs of the most disadvantaged? This brief examines policies in the US and Thailand to highlight key equity considerations.
SEI report / This guidance note looks at applying a GSE lens in sustainable development research and how to integrate GSE when conducting research.
Other publication / This document draws on SEI experience with WEAP and LEAP to provide guidance for mainstreaming gender and social equity issues into modelling studies
Other publication / Key findings from recent SEI research projects around the world focused on gender issues in the context of development and sustainability.
Feature / A key focus of this year’s UN climate negotiations is ensuring a “just transition” away from fossil fuels. SEI’s experts explain what that means.
Perspective / This year's Asia Pacific Adaptation Forum recognized gender in climate change adaptation, but many of its complexities have yet to be addressed.
Perspective / A new tool – the WASH Insecurity Scale – reveals detailed patterns of WASH inequality in an African informal settlement.
Perspective / The socioeconomic impacts of air pollution and crop losses need more understanding – especially when it comes to gender.
Perspective / Have climate and gender discussions only called for the inclusion of women without tracing where the power lies?
Other publication / This report unveils pivotal governance, management and profit reinvestment models used by fair trade enterprises that are already working across the world.
SEI brief / Do transition policies address the needs of the most disadvantaged? This brief examines policies in the US and Thailand to highlight key equity considerations.
Design and development by Soapbox.
