BOOKS
Putting women in their right place Has gender equality improved since International Women’s Day was first launched a century ago? The answers heard during this year’s global events on 8 March were mixed. Yes, progress has been made, but discrimination continues everywhere, which not only harms women but holds back society’s potential too. Take development. Promoting gender equality and empowering women is the third of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals, but as the Atlas of Gender and Development: How Social Norms Affect Gender Equality in non-OECD Countries shows, gender discrimination still spans the world. Many studies, including at the OECD, measure women’s progress in terms of, say, how many women attend secondary school or university, or how many are members of parliament. This book takes a different approach, focusing on 124 developing countries to see how fundamental social institutions, including family codes, the right to freedom of movement and dress, and access to land, property and credit, determine women’s progress–or lack thereof–in society.
a research team from Göttingen University, has also published a series of studies on donor aid targeting gender equality and women’s empowerment, called Aid in Support of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. The studies present charts, graphs and detailed financial information for each member country of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. Gender and Sustainable Development: Maximising the Economic, Social and Environmental Role of Women, meanwhile, focuses on the crucial wider role of women in securing the future of our world. And the OECD Development Centre’s Wikigender project aims to gather and disseminate information on gender equality through an interactive website, www.wikigender.org.
Atlas of Gender and Development: How Social Norms Affect Gender Equality in non-OECD Countries, ISBN 978-92-64-07520-7 Aid in Support of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, available at www.oecd.org/dac/gender Gender and Sustainable Development: Maximising the Economic, Social and Environmental Role of Women, ISBN 978-92-64-04990-1 Visit www.oecd.org/gender
Gender is frequently covered by the OECD Observer, with issues such as development and discrimination, international migration, labour, education and most recently, entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa (see No 275, November 2009 and see www.oecdobserver.org/gender).
The OECD, which developed these indicators of gender equality together with
Less frequent flyers Despite a 12.5% decline in international tourism travel in the first quarter of 2009–the depths of the current recession– international tourism has been growing slightly faster than the world economy and is expected to continue to do so, with a projected average annual growth rate of about 4% over the long term. Clearly, though tourism has slowed, “getting away from it all” still has resonance in the crisis. Also, as OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2010 notes, people have been discovering new places to get away to. The focus of international travel, once fixed on Europe and North America, has spread south and east: China is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, and the Asia-Pacific region now ranks second–behind Europe and ahead of the Americas–as an international tourist destination and in income from tourism.
Meanwhile, the market shares of Africa and the Middle East are growing strongly. In Egypt, for example, tourism now accounts for more than 6% of the country’s GDP and 13% of total employment, while in South Africa, tourism represents more than 7% of both GDP and total employment.
recommendations on how to develop tourism sustainably in the face of concerns about climate change and biodiversity, and how to manage and protect historic monuments from the wear and tear of so many visitors. ISBN 978-92-64-07741-6
Tourism has an impact throughout the economy. With the current economic slowdown, whole sectors, and particularly employment opportunities, could suffer. As OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2010 suggests, long-term strategies are essential, and governments must take the lead in developing cross-sector policies to promote responsible tourism. OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2010 offers country-specific data on tourism for 42 countries. It also provides policymakers and those involved in the industry with
OECD Observer No 278 March 2010
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