Understanding and Fighting Gender Inequality

Workshop leaders: Prof Nicholas Cheeseman and Dr Jill Steans

The University of Birmingham is home to a number of leading researchers on gender studies, working across the Colleges of Arts and Law, Social Science and Medicine, leading current debates on how best to understand and respond to gender inequality in countries throughout the world, particularly Africa and Latin America and growing expertise in South Asia. The University is therefore well placed to play a leading role in the realization of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically goal 3 on good health and wellbeing, goal 5 on gender equality, goal 8 on decent work, and goal 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions.  The University has recently consolidated its strengths in gender studies through the establishment of a gender inequality stream within the Institute for Global Innovation to work across the divides of established academic disciplines and without the impediments of traditional institutional structures.  

The immediate aim of this workshop is to bring together experts from the University with key external partners, both prominent academics from the UK and beyond, and representatives from international governmental organizations and non-governmental organizations, including established charities, with a wealth of practical experience in developing and implementing extensive programmes of work across the developing world.  Through a series of focused discussions conducted over two days,  researchers and practitioners will work towards a mutually beneficial outcome; the identification of a programme of research that confronts the dominant gender norms and material disparities that underpin, sustain and reproduce gender inequality and that also tackles the legal, economic and political barriers to social change.

The workshop will be organized around five key themes:

• healthcare (HIV/AIDS, maternal health);
• sexual, reproductive and marital rights (legal frameworks and social norms, gender identity and sexual orientation);
• gender based violence (intimate partner violence and conflict related violence);
• political rights and participation (political parties, legislatures, councils, NGOs, traditional structures);
• gender barriers within and into work (wage gaps, maternity leave and workplace inclusion).