March 13, 2015

University of Washington faculty and student analysts from the START Center contributed key background research for a report on gender inequality released this week and promoted by three global health powerhouses: Melinda Gates, Hillary Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton.

"Women and girls should be able to lead the lives we want, wherever we’re born and wherever we live. This simple view is the reason that we collaborated on this report. We hope that the data in it can be used to help get us there." - Melinda Gates, Hillary Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton.

The Full Participation Report was commissioned to examine progress made since the landmark Beijing Declaration made headlines when leaders from around the world committed to ensuring that women and girls have the opportunity to fully participate in all aspects of life. Since the Declaration in 1995, the status of women and girls has improved, but a deeper look into the data shows there is still much work to be done to secure gender equality on global scale. For example, one in three women experience physical or sexual violence, and 200 million fewer women have internet access than men in the developing world.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the No Ceilings initiative of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation commissioned the report and it features downloadable data on the state of women. Its 850,000 data points cover a variety of issues including education, maternity leave, child marriage, and voting rights.

The University of Washington students specifically analyzed violence against women, and women in the media, two of the key Beijing declarations. The team identified indicators (e.g. measures of the status of these areas, such as prevalence of violence against women, existence of laws protecting women) and data sources to measure the indicators. They ranked the data sources in terms of quality and ability to evaluate changes over time to see how much progress had been made in the areas addressed by the Beijing Declaration in the past 20 years. These inventories were then shared with the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) of The Economist, which created many of the visualizations for the report.

Department of Global Health faculty and students from the START Center who contributed background research to this report include: Jonathan Muir, PhD student in Sociology; Emily Deischel, PhD student in Epidemiology; Erica Lokken, MS student in Epidemiology; Pamela Kohler, PhD, faculty mentor and Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health and School of Nursing; and Lisa Manhart, faculty mentor, START Center Co-Director, and Associate Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Global Health. 

To learn more about gender inequality, follow ‪#‎NoCeilings and visit noceilings.org to view the report.

The START Center at the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health uses an innovative mentorship model to provide high-quality analysis and research support to public health organizations while developing applied research and analytic skills or graduate research assistants in global and domestic public health. To learn more visit the START Center website.