Moving out of identity silos and into intersectionality: the example of gender identity

By Smriti Sharma

Women are undoubtedly doing better today than they were even 40-50 years ago. The gender gap has shrunk in many areas, including educational attainment, health, and employment and wages. Despite these advances, we cannot become complacent as there is still much work to be done. Continue reading “Moving out of identity silos and into intersectionality: the example of gender identity”

Inequality: Driving Forces and Policy Solutions

By Carlos Gradin and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa

The many faces of inequality

Measuring inequality isn’t as simple as it may seem. We know that since the 1970s global inequality has been falling in relative terms, but absolute inequality has been increasing over the same period. There are also substantial differences in trends across the different regions of the world. In North America, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa inequality has been increasing steadily in both relative and absolute terms, while in Latin America, East Asia, and the Pacific, absolute inequality increased while relative inequality fell. Continue reading “Inequality: Driving Forces and Policy Solutions”

Challenges to EU Development Policy: Paradigm Lost or Stretched?

by Sarah Delputte and Jan Orbie

European Union (EU) development policy seems plagued by many challenges from within and outside. We argue that underlying these challenges lay more fundamental problems with the Eurocentric, modernist and colonial paradigm of EU development policy. We witness some cracks in the pillars of the current paradigm, namely in the form of policy failures, epistemic changes, and power shifts. However, this seems unlikely to entail radical paradigm change. Instead of moving in the direction of post-development, we merely observe experimental approaches stretching the prevailing paradigm. Continue reading “Challenges to EU Development Policy: Paradigm Lost or Stretched?”

More humility about what we think is good:

Reflections on revising the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index

By Sabina Alkire, Usha Kanagaratnam and Frank Vollmer

In her Oxford University Press blog post, “Some value safety, others value risk”, Valerie Tiberius, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, invites the reader to reflect on how to value well-being and a good life.

The blog was written in promotion of her latest book, “Well-Being as Value Fulfillment”, and Tiberius discusses the acts of Colin O’Brady and Louis Rudd, both married and one a father, who became the first to cross the Antarctic unsupported in 2018 for no other apparent reason than: it had never been achieved before. Continue reading “More humility about what we think is good:”