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“...gender aware policies,
programs, and actions
are required to meet
multiple SDGs”
SHONALI PACHAURI
“It's important to reduce barriers that prevent
women from having higher labor force participation.
By doing so, previously economically inactive people
can enter the workforce, thereby reducing the
dependency ratio and mitigating consequences of
population aging,” says study lead author Guillaume
Marois, a researcher at IIASA and the Asian
Demographic Research Institute of Shanghai University.
The study highlights the “huge reservoir of talent”
women represent and their potential rising-tide-
lifts-all-boats dynamism. Marois adds that stabilizing
demography is a prerequisite for sustainability,
while women’s empowerment is a key driver in
stabilizing demography.
This new IIASA research shows that higher levels
of education and expected increases in labor force
participation (particularly among women) in both
migrant and local populations will mitigate the
financial challenges posed by aging populations
in EU countries.
“Although demographic aging is unavoidable in
Europe, our research shows that the fears associated
with the coming economic burden have been unduly
exaggerated. Conventional projections use the
simplistic and inappropriate conventional age-
dependency ratio, which assumes that everyone
aged over 65 is not working and that everyone
aged between 15 and 64 is equally productive,”
Marois explains. “With better labor force
participation among migrants and the
general population, Europe could
largely avoid the widely expected
negative impacts of aging.”
Conversely, the study also found that
high immigration volumes combined
with both low education and integration
leads to increasing economic dependency. The best policy options would be to match Swedish
levels of workforce participation — the highest in
the EU — and lift labor-force participation in the
general population, particularly among women,
while practicing education-selective migration
accompanied by high integration.
It is clear that getting more women into the
workforce could make European development more
sustainable in terms of population dynamics, but
outside of Europe, where there are arguably even
more gender disparities, gender issues are having
an even greater impact.
EQUALITY IN THE SPOTLIGHT
“We live in a world ridden with inequalities, some of
which overlap,” notes IIASA researcher Shonali
Pachauri.
One study exploring links between gender, energy,
and poverty, she contributed to, found that increasing
access to affordable, clean energy is also gender
linked and addressing gender imbalances is a possible
solution to persistent issues.
“The study, based on a five-year research program,
brought out last year, highlighted certain key findings
and recommendations. The most important of these
is that gender aware policies, programs, and actions
are required to meet multiple SDGs,” she explains.
The report emphasizes that while SDG5 separately
recognizes the importance of gender equality from
energy access addressed by SDG7, in reality energy
access and gender equality are inextricably linked,
and addressing them together can offer multiple
development gains. The authors also point out
the challenges and the triumphs of such polices,
particularly in the Global South, where many gender-
rebalancing projects are underway.
14 Options www.iiasa.ac.atSummer
2020
zurĂĽck zum
Buch options, Band summer 2020"
options
Band summer 2020
- Titel
- options
- Band
- summer 2020
- Ort
- Laxenburg
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Seiten
- 32
- Kategorien
- Zeitschriften Options Magazine