‘A man marries his housekeeper and that country’s GDP falls’: On becoming a feminist
It was 1995. I had just started working in the United Nations system, as a junior professional officer in the Havana office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). One evening I was reading the latest UNDP Human Development Report (HDR), whose special topic that...
My Journey Through Gender Analysis
Six years ago, when I was 25 years old, I had the chance to start working as a researcher at the center for research and statistics in the Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUSADES)....
The Woman Who Was Born Again
It’s been almost eight years now. The memory is still fresh in my mind. It was a rainy night of July 6, 2011, and my baby boy was only 5 months old. I was in the dining room of my parents’ house, watching the TV news...
The lost voices in the forest – The case of poor indigenous women in Guatemala
Sometimes, in the deep wild forests of Guatemala, weird inaudible noises appear. Noises that can’t be identified as wild birds or falling trees. These recurrent noises are different, they are not natural. Someone could say they resemble voices, but have become so normalized, that people...
Why International Development Needs Storytelling
I’ve always been interested in storytelling. A story is a time-tested way to pass experiences down from one person to another. A story is how wisdom is shared with the next generation, whether a historical text or a bedtime story, and it’s how we as...
Walking the talk: Think Tanks & Gender
Like all organizations, policy research organizations — also known as “think tanks” — reflect the gendered social norms of their societies. This means that think tanks themselves can either perpetuate gender inequalities or foster gender equality in their organizational structures and research processes....
why care is a political act
There are many ways to understand what care means. Here, we define it as looking after the physical, emotional, spiritual and mental wellbeing, safety and dignity of ourselves and others. Too often, the focus is on a narrow form of self-care, forgetting the essential, and...
the shell game of self-reflection
Just after my freshman year of college, I was sexually assaulted on the Washington, D.C., metro en route to a summer internship. I remember most of the details: I was wearing a knee-length khaki skirt, and a man standing behind me reached under my skirt...
how to look like you’re trying to end sexual harassment
As the leader of a large complex organization — like the Catholic Church, Fox News, the State of New York, or the United Nations — the pressure on you to take action to end sexual harassment is enormous. Especially with Ronan Farrow and the New...
these 7 organizations are pushing boundaries in india
In the wake of Dysco’s collaboration with MIXX for Mind the Gap, people are expressing interest to explore the genderisation of jobs and its adverse effects on us all. Increasing domestic and international pressure to improve the condition of women’s empowerment and gender issues, has...