GENDER, RACE & IDENTITY
Celebrating women at home and globally—and reckoning with ongoing challenges
To mark Women’s History Month, Harvard Kennedy School faculty, students, and research centers are highlighting the contributions of women to society and examining the many obstacles that women still face. The School’s principal home for research on gender is the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP), which examines and advances gender equity in the economy, politics, security, and leadership. Recent faculty scholarship includes papers by Professors Iris Bohnet and Hannah Riley Bowles, who co-direct WAPPP, assessing gender bias in the workplace and how to use data to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. For International Women’s Day on March 8, a student-run conference heard HKS faculty and guest panelists address themes of women in power. The Institute of Politics, in collaboration with the Center for International Development, the Middle East Initiative, and WAPPP, hosted a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum featuring Queen Rania of Jordan. Another Forum event, in collaboration with the School’s Center for Public Leadership, heard from former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. WAPPP hosted a virtual event with Melanne Verveer, the first U.S. ambassador for global women’s issues, and Associate Dean of International Affairs Rangita de Silva de Alwis of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. | | | |
WHAT WE'RE READING
Professor Kathryn Sikkink has been elected to the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences | | | | | |
GENDER, RACE & IDENTITY
Women working in informal sector have been hardest hit by COVID-19
Scholars based at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy examine threats and opportunities facing women in the year ahead. HKS Lecturer Martha Chen notes that over half of all women globally—and nearly 90 percent of women in developing countries—are working in the informal sector. She cites evidence to show that informal workers have been hardest hit in the pandemic, in part because many aid and safety net programs don’t reach them. Domestic workers, street vendors, and waste pickers are often women and have few protections and little access to help, says Chen, who has focused her research on informal workers globally. Other contributors include Carr Center Executive Director Sushma Raman. She argues that women and gender non-conforming human rights defenders around the world are under increasing attack from authoritarian leaders who use sexist, homophobic, and racist rhetoric and vitriol.
Also: Senior Lecturer Hannah Riley Bowles, co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program, speaks about why women have left the workforce at greater rates than men. | | | |
WHAT WE'RE HEARING
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When jobs are scarce, women are the first to be let go because they're viewed as being expendable. ...With the lockdown and the closures of schools and day care centers, a lot of women found themselves either quitting or being asked to leave their jobs. That is really difficult for moms and their families.” | |
—Queen Rania of Jordan, speaking at JFK Jr. Forum | | | | |
HEALTH
The pandemic a year later: What went wrong and what lies ahead
One year ago, specialists in infectious diseases and emergency management gathered for a JFK Jr. Forum at Harvard Kennedy School to discuss the emerging pandemic. It turned out to be the last such in-person gathering. The same experts gathered again on March 5 to consider what went wrong and what’s ahead. HKS Senior Lecturer Juliette Kayyem, whose work and teaching focuses on emergency and crisis management, joined the other panelists in criticizing the Trump administration for failing to mount a concerted strategy to contain COVID-19. She declared herself “unrelentingly unforgiving” of the failures and called for a 9/11 Commission-style accounting. Assistant Professor Michael Mina, an infectious disease specialist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, said that better policies could have prevented 90 percent of the deaths in the United States from the pandemic. | | | |
ENVIRONMENT & ENERGY
Bill Clark has spent decades shaping the theory and practice of sustainability science
Over his 45-year career, HKS Professor Bill Clark has worked to transform the scientific and public policy world’s thinking about how to promote responsible stewardship of the planet through sustainable development. As a young scientist, he used his MacArthur Genius grant to develop the concepts that now define the field of sustainability science. Clark helped develop a framework for pursuing sustainability grounded in a broad set of resources and assets: these include not only natural capital but also human capital, manufactured capital, social capital, and knowledge capital. At Harvard, he led a decade-long campaign to make the University itself more sustainable, co-chairing greenhouse gas emission task forces and the 2015 Harvard University Sustainability Plan. A profile of Clark’s impressive contributions to the University and to the broader field is among the featured articles in the winter edition of the HKS Magazine. | | | |
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