Panel Session at the 62nd UN Commission for the Status of Women: How can we improve the life choices for women in rural Africa?

Women and girls are often expected to fulfil roles that limit their ability to make strategic and empowering life choices, this is particularly true in rural settings. Whether this is because of traditional and cultural expectations, economic status or lack of access to healthcare and education – there are many opportunities to increase women’s life choices.

Chaired by Thokozile Ruzvidzo, Director, Social Development Policy Division, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the panel of researchers and NGOs will propose policies ideas based on research and evidence on the shame of poverty, social mobility, economic empowerment and educational aspiration.

The panel includes: 

• Barbara Kalima-Phiri, World Vision International, USA
• Nicola Ansell, Brunel University, UK
• Gina Porter, Durham University, UK

The session will be based on research funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Department for International Development (DFID) and is sponsored by The Impact Initiative for International Development Research and The Institute Of Development Studies. It is organised as part of the sixty-second session of the Commission on the Status of Women CSW62 (2018) and focuses on 'Challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls.

Related resources:

• Impact Stories
  • Keeping African Girls in School with Better Sanitary Care
    • Project Syndicate opinion piece
    • Global Partnership for Education blog
  • Reducing Teenage Pregnancy in Sierra Leone

• Rapid Response Briefing: Automation, Women, and the Future of Work
  
  
• ESRC-DFID Research for Policy and Practice: Women's Life Choices
  
  
• Key Issues Guide: Women at Work: Understanding the Social Norms that Restrict Women's Access to Paid Work
  
  
• Synthesis Report and Summary: Gender Evidence Synthesis Research Award (ESRA) and New Knowledge on the Gendered Nature of Poverty and Wellbeing This evidence synthesis provides a review of the contribution to understandings of gendered poverty by research funded by ESRC-DFID Joint Poverty Alleviation Fund.

• Video: Child Marriage Campaigns are Missing the Point and DEVEX opinion piece by Nicola Ansell.

Related news and blogs:

• Can better sanitary care help keep African girls in school? – Global Partnership for Education blog
• Child marriage campaigns are missing the point – DEVEX opinion piece
• CSW62: how can we improve life choices for women?
• Gags and gaps: why sharing evidence on women’s life choices is hard
• IDS and partner research highlights barriers to women’s empowerment
• Demystifying menstruation – Project Syndicate opinion piece
• Putting Children First: take-away messages
• Vaginas, the UN and social science: making evidence count

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