Our current themes

Key research, news and other useful resources on central themes for gender and development.

BRIDGE works across a broad range of topics, but our current work is focused on these themes:

	Climate change Climate change is recognised as a global crisis, but responses tend to focus on scientific and economic solutions rather than addressing the vitally significant human and gender dimensions. Because of gendered social roles, women are in the front line of climate change impacts, such as droughts, floods and other extreme weather events - yet they are the least responsible for environmental destruction. How then do we move towards more people-centred, gender-aware climate change policies and processes?
	Finance for development Often assumed to be a ‘gender neutral’ arena, economic policies in fact have significant potential to worsen or improve gender inequalities. Achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls is essential to achieve equitable sustainable growth and development. All over the world, women and men tend to have different economic roles and responsibilities, as well as different access to productive resources. In most cases, women tend to be at a disadvantage.
	Food security There is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone, but the number of people affected by hunger and malnutrition is still unacceptably high, with disproportionate impacts on women and girls. Food and nutrition insecurity is a political and economic phenomenon fuelled by inequitable global and national processes. It is also a sustainability and gender justice issue. Why do hunger and malnutrition continue to exist in a world where everyone should be guaranteed the basic right to adequate, nutritious food? Why and how are women and girls so disproportionately affected by hunger?
	Indicators How can we measure gender inequality? What does change look like and how do we know it’s in the right direction? Gender-sensitive indicators and other measurements of change are critical - for building the case for taking gender (in)equality seriously, for enabling better planning and actions, and for holding institutions accountable for their commitments on gender. While the refinement of existing indices and indicators remains critical, gender-sensitive measurements alone do not achieve gender equality.
	Information and communication technologies (ICTs) The rapid global spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and particularly the proliferation of mobile internet devices, is redefining not only the realms of information and communication, but the very nature of social structures and institutions. This global ‘information society’ or ‘network society’ is not gender neutral; it has different implications for people of different genders, of all age groups, and for the relationships between them.
	Migration In many parts of the world, migration has replaced fertility and mortality as the leading agent of demographic change. A person’s gender, age, religion, race, ethnicity, sexuality and health or disability shape every stage of the migration experience.
	Social Movements Across the world there is an active, mass-based demand for an end to gender injustice in all domains of our social, economic, political, and cultural lives. In order for any action or intervention around rights, democracy and equality to be successful, it must include and value gender equality as part of its analysis and methodology for change. But while women's rights and gender justice are 'on the agenda' in many arenas, activists still encounter strong resistance to changing gendered politics and practices within movements and allied organisations.
	Working with men and boys for gender equality There remains much work to do on delivering transformative change towards gender equality - women and girls still have fewer opportunities, rights and freedoms than men and boys. But gender equality will not be achieved without the involvement of men and boys. Engaging men and boys in work for gender equality is important for three reasons: