Jamila Gysin

First, I want to give an insight into the 4th and 5th sustainable development goal (SDG); explain their targets and importance to achieve these goals. Furthermore, I want to lay out possible solutions to tackle these two SDGs.

SDG # 4 – Education

The learning crisis

Despite the fact that most of the countries worldwide have a net enrollment rate to primary schools above 90 %, assessments of students learning revealed that children often do not leave school with the necessary skills needed for life and work. The statistics show for example that in low income regions like the sub Saharan Africa, only around 10 % of late primary school students were able to do simple reading tasks like reproducing explicitly stated information from informational texts. In India for example 75 % of grade 3 students could not do two-digit subtraction. The main reasons for this learning crisis we are facing right now lies in schools (lack of school material and poor governance), teachers (too few, lack of skills, unmotivated), students (malnourished, sick, poor pre-school cognitive-psychological development) or parents (poor, uneducated, don’t see the benefits of investing in education). Those children coming from poor families (economic and social inequalities) show the largest learning deficits where inequality in the child’s development starts at the earliest stage. Schools can help in compensating for the disadvantages that come from being born into a poor economic environment. Those education systems that are able to reduce inequalities that students bring with their different background are also those that generate high levels of learning [2].

How to tackle the learning crisis

Research has shown that solving this learning crisis is not a one-answer-problem. There is not one great solution, but we can break down the large question of improvement in learning into smaller ones and go from answering these. Starting from a set of possible interventions to solve the learning crisis we can assess the outcome in relation to each other and evaluate the best solutions. The World Bank looked at the research that has been done regarding the impact evaluation of interventions on learning outcomes, and identified three key points for better interventions: 1) prepared learners: The ability to learn skills later depend much on nutrition and stimulation in very early years in life as well as cognitive and socioemotional development in the pre-school years. 2) effective teaching: “a change in teacher professional development strategies could substantially improve learning outcomes.” Approaches in teacher training that seem to show the best outcomes are those that build on teachers’ intrinsic motivation and that recognize performance in a more holistic way. 3) classroom-focused support: many interventions work with new technology, but many of these interventions fail. For the best learning output the technology needs to be implementable in the current system, which also includes teachers being able to leverage the technology.

SDG # 5 – Gender Equality

The 5th SDG focuses on gender equality and therefore ending all forms of discrimination, violence (in the public and private spheres) and harmful practices such as child marriage such as early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation against women and girls. Furthermore, a goal of this SDG is to “recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate”. Women and girls must enjoy the same political participation as well as equal opportunities when it comes to employment, leadership and decision making in political, economic and social life1.

Link between gender equality and education

“The achievement of full human potential and of sustainable development is not possible if one half of humanity continues to be denied its full human rights and opportunities [1].”

If you look at the gender parity index which gives information about the ratio between female and male students, it seems that the gender gap in primary and secondary school enrolment has been narrowed (global GPI 2018: 0.997). But still some countries fall really short in equal enrolment rates. Particularly in low income countries there are still large deficits in school enrolment of girls and children from poor families. Therefore, girls have a harder time accessing school, but those who do, tend to persist. Girls are less likely than boys to repeat grades or leave school early. Since the 1990s, more women than men complete tertiary education in most countries with extreme regional differences. Despite improved access, women are less likely to continue into higher education levels and research fields. Only about 29% of the world’s researchers are women. In every region, women researchers remain the minority in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In the Netherlands, for example, only 26% of researchers are women and they account for just 15% of those working in the field of engineering and technology. Female researchers also tend to work in the academic and government sectors, while men dominate the private sector which offers better salaries and opportunities. The data suggests that there are a range of policies needed – from school programmes that encourage girls to pursue their studies in science and mathematics to professional arrangements that enable women to manage family-caring responsibilities and overcome the bias that persists in many workplaces [3].

The gender pay gap

The gender pay gap or gender wage gap is the average difference in the wage for men and women who are working. In the literature you will find two distinct numbers regarding the pay gap; the non-adjusted and the adjusted pay gap. The non-adjusted gender pay gap is defined as the difference between the average gross hourly earnings of men and women expressed as a percentage of the average gross hourly earnings of men. In the US for every dollar a man makes a woman makes about 80 cents, for women of color it’s even worse; they earn only 63 cents on the dollar and for Hispanic women it’s only 54 cents [4]. The adjusted pay gap takes into account several factors, such as differences in hours worked, part-time work, occupational segregation (less women in leading positions and in the fields like STEM), education and job experience. The numbers provided by the Federal Statistics Office shows for Switzerland a unadjusted gap of 19.5 % in 2016. Meaning women working in Switzerland on average earn 19.5% less than men in Switzerland. Regarding the different factors I stated above a share of around 55 % of the wage gap can be explained. The other 45 % remains “unexplained” [5].This unexplained percentage is thus the gender difference in pay that can be attributed to discrimination against women. Other European countries have a similar gender wage gap as Switzerland, even Scandinavian countries like Sweden (11% unadjusted in 2018). A country with a lower gap is for example Iceland. From an economic and public policy perspective the gender pay gap can be a problem, because it reduces economic output and leads to a stronger dependence upon welfare payments for women, especially in old age [6].

Reasons for the gap

There are many reasons for the existence of the gender pay gap in even economically, socially and technically advanced countries such as Switzerland, the US and Iceland. Furthermore, I want to explain the impact of three factors I find particularly interesting and worth looking at in more detail.

Industry sector

A big part of the unadjusted pay gap can be explained by the fact that women are more likely to work in less paid jobs (f.eg. service sector) than men. A 2017 study by the US National Science Foundation revealed pay gaps in different areas of science: there is a much larger proportion of men in higher-paying fields such as mathematics and computer science, the two highest-paying scientific fields. ETH shows this tendency as well. ETH’s gender monitoring report 2017/18 shows that the department with the lowest proportion of female doctoral candidates was the department of computer science, at 15.3%. The department of mechanical and process engineering had the lowest proportion of female students with 10.5%. Looking at whole Switzerland (comparable to other European countries) humanities and social science is a department that on average has more female bachelor students than male students. In the social sciences the differences between gender pay checks also become smaller. ETH’s gender monitoring report also shows that the statistics didn’t change much since 2003; between 2003 and 2016, the proportion of female students had remained at approximately 30%. In 2017, the proportion of women holding a full or an associate professorship amounted to 12.1%. Meaning there should be done more by institutions to make these numbers more gender equal.

The motherhood penalty

There is one thing that hurts women’s salaries more than anything else. The impact on having kids on women’s earnings is huge. The statistics show that on average when families get children, men experience a pay bump while women face the opposite. While some time ago in history it was normal for women to stay at home and raise the kids and be “only” a mom, as more women went to do paying jobs, they never stopped doing the first thing. Many women now work and have kids. We call this “have it all”. But what we actually have when we have it all, is having two jobs. And doing two things at once has costs. The financial consequences show in their pay checks. This phenomenon is called the motherhood penalty, which explains the statistics that show the increase of the gender pay gap with age. When women first start working, they are making just little less than men. By the time they reach 45 years women make around 50% less than men [7]. In a traditional role setting, women are the ones who leave the workforce temporarily to take care of their children. As a result, women tend to take lower paying jobs because they are more likely to have more flexible timings compared to higher paying jobs6.

Social norms and the constructed gender roles

The economist Henrik Kleven from Princeton University compared the pay gap across six countries; Denmark, Sweden, the UK, The US, Austria and Germany. These countries have different public policies for working moms. Some have paid parental leave, some subsidized child-care. What was interesting in his studies was that the differences in the gender pay gap had less to do with public policies but more with differences in social norms about what men and women should do after they have kids. In societies like Germanys where people express a strong conviction that women with young kids should stay at home, the gender pay gap is a lot bigger. Germany has a pay gap for working women three times larger than Denmark although they have a lot of the same social safety policies. For instance, in both countries’ women get more than a year of paid parental leave. This difference can be explained by social norms in Germany and Austria (therefore very likely also Switzerland) that have according to surveys still a very traditional view on gender roles. Of course, policies affect social norms but if women are forced to choose in a society like Germany the statistics say that they will likely choose to stay at home and raise the child [7].

Iceland as an example of how to fix it

Iceland has been rated as the world’s most gender equal country for a decade. It was the first to directly elect a female president, around half of members of the parliament and company directors are female. Although there exists an equal pay act since 1961 Icelandic women still earn less than men. In 2017 no other country has gone as far as Iceland when it comes to demanding equal pay for equal work. They passed a new law which requires companies and institutions employing 25 or more workers to obtain equal pay certification. If the company cannot be certified as paying equal wages for work of equal value, they will face daily fines. Furthermore, Iceland and other countries have a great system of parental leave. They introduced a nine-month parental leave, where three months are earmarked for the father as well as for the mother and the remaining three months can be shared by the parents. If the father doesn’t take his due leave it is lost for both parents. The results showed off; there has been a radical change to childcare since the legislation was introduced. Both parents are active in childcare now [8].

To close the gender gap for good we need to change how we think

The UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Women concluded, “Changing norms should be at the top of the 2030 Agenda.” Our social norms dictate to a certain degree how women and men are supposed to behave, which kind of character traits are regarded as feminine and which not and therefore which gender fits more to do certain jobs. In the end our social norms limit expectations of what women and men can or should do. We should not only talk about women when it comes to the gender pay gap but face it as a human issue that needs to be questioned and tackled from all sides. “And it’s not just a matter of focusing on Goal 5. Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls must happen across all the SDGs to ensure their success, from poverty to sanitation and climate change.”[1]