The Role of Laws, Policies, and Rights in Advancing Gender Equality in the Economy: Evidence and Impacts Across 193 Countries

Dr. Jody Heymann, founding director of the WORLD Policy Analysis Center and author of the new open-access book Equality Within Our Lifetimes: How Laws and Policies Can Close–or Widen–Gender Gaps in Economies Worldwide.

Every U.N. member state has committed to realizing gender equality in the economy–through the UDHR, ratifying CEDAW, the ICESCR, or by adopting the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet massive gender disparities in employment, earnings, and leadership positions persist. Sharing findings from a one-of-a-kind database that covers constitutional rights, laws, and policies in 193 countries, this event will shed light on where the world stands when it comes to guaranteeing fundamental equal rights that matter to women’s economic opportunities, spanning topics including girls’ education, employment discrimination of all kinds, sexual harassment, and caregiving needs across the life course. Heymann will also present findings from a series of studies that rigorously examine how laws and policies affect health, education, and wellbeing across countries, and share how globally comparative law and policy data can support accountability for countries’ international human rights commitments while providing actionable evidence for national policymakers and civil society.

Dr Jody Heymann, MD, PhD, is founding director of the WORLD Policy Analysis Center and served as dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health from 2013-2018. 

As director of the WORLD Policy Analysis Center (WORLD), Heymann leads an unprecedented effort to improve the level and quality of comparative policy data available to policymakers, researchers and the public. WORLD examines health and social policies and outcomes in all 193 UN countries. WORLD’s mission is to strengthen equal opportunities worldwide by identifying the most effective public sector approaches, improving the quantity and quality of globally comparative data available, and working in partnerships to support evidence-based improvements in countries worldwide. WORLD has worked with global bodies (WHO, UNICEF, UNDESA, UNESCO, ILO, and others), civil society in over 100 countries, research groups, private sector leaders, and other global change agents. In 2023, WORLD will be launching new policy data on accelerating progress toward achieving gender equality in the economy, with data from 193 countries on topics including girls’ access to education, sexual harassment and discrimination at work, and policies that support gender equality in work and in caregiving across the life course. WORLD’s analyses of constitutions in all 193 UN member countries and their role in strengthening social and economic rights contributed to creating a Partnership for Advancing Constitutional Equal Rights. WORLD’s launches on policies affecting children reached people in 190 countries, as did their No Ceilings partnership with the Clinton and Gates Foundations on equal opportunities for women, men, girls, and boys. Heymann previously held a Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy at McGill University where she was the founding director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy. While on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, she founded the Project on Global Working Families. Heymann has received numerous honors, including election to the U. S. National Academy of Medicine in 2013 and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2012.

Heymann has authored and edited more than 500 publications, including 19 books. Selected titles include Equality within Our Lifetimes (University of California Press, 2023), Advancing Equality (University of California Press, 2020), Changing Children’s Chances (Harvard University Press, 2013), Making Equal Rights Real (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Lessons in Educational Equality (Oxford University Press, 2012), Protecting Childhood in the AIDS Pandemic (Oxford University Press, 2012), Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder (Harvard Business Press, 2010), Raising the Global Floor (Stanford University Press, 2009), Trade and Health (McGill Queens University Press, 2007), Forgotten Families (Oxford University Press, 2006), and Healthier Societies (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Dr Shreya Atrey is an Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and is based at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. She is an associate member of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, an Official Fellow and Racial Justice and Equality Fellow at Kellogg College, and a Senior Teaching Fellow at New College. Shreya is the Editor of the Human Rights Law Review (OUP). Previously, she was based at the University of Bristol Law School and has been a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, and a Hauser Postdoctoral Global Fellow at the NYU School of Law, New York. She completed BCL with distinction and DPhil in Law on the Rhodes Scholarship from Magdalen College, University of Oxford.

Shreya works on equality and human rights issues in comparative and international law. Her first monograph, Intersectional Discrimination (OUP 2019) won the runner-up Peter Birks Book Prize in 2020. The monograph presents an account of intersectionality theory in comparative discrimination law and has been cited by the South African Constitutional Court in their path-breaking decision: Mahlangu v Minister of Labour and Others [2020] ZACC 24 (19 November 2020), which recognised the right of Black female domestic workers to access compensation for workplace injury; and the Supreme Court of India which relied on her framework of ‘intersectional integrity’ for understanding and redressing sexual violence against women in their landmark decision: Patan Jamal Vali v State of Andhra Pradesh Criminal Appeal No 452 of 2021 (27 April 2021).