Women in West Africa experience unique vulnerabilities to food insecurity due to structural and cultural drivers rooted in gendered social norms. We aimed to systematically review and synthesise available evidence describing the extent of food insecurity among women in West Africa, focusing on prevalence, drivers, and gender inequalities. Global Health, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, and Scopus were searched from year 2000 up until 2023 for quantitative and qualitative studies reporting data on the prevalence or drivers of food insecurity among women (independently of or in comparison to men) in West Africa. Thirty-two studies identified from four West African countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin) met the inclusion criteria. About 24% of women experienced food insecurity in Côte d’Ivoire, 33–52% in Ghana, and 23–75% in Nigeria. In Benin, a study using the Household Food Insecurity Experience Scale (HFIES) reported a mean score of 3.2. Female-headed households had a higher prevalence of food insecurity than male-headed households. Key drivers of food insecurity among women included age (mixed findings across studies), low education, larger households, women’s income level, adhering to traditional gender roles, being single or widowed, assets owned, access to and control over productive and agricultural resources (land, capital), and autonomy. Food insecurity among women in parts of West Africa is high in prevalence, with significant gender inequalities. Targeted interventions to improve women’s access to resources, education, and economic opportunities, while addressing restrictive gender norms, should be prioritised.

Sustainable land management (SLM) practices are promoted to restore degraded ecosystems in the Great Green Wall (GGW) areas, yet their large-scale adoption depends on effective engagement of rural communities. This study analyses the factors shaping adoption of SLM practices, with particular attention to gender differences and the role of women. The research was conducted in six regions of Djibouti, including four intersected by the GGW initiative. Mixed quantitative and qualitative surveys were carried out in 19 villages with 329 farmers and 21 community leaders. An adoption index based on ten SLM practices was constructed and examined across national, regional, and village scales using incremental regression modelling. Results show that adoption levels are significantly higher among men than women. Although the gender effect is strong at the national scale, it decreases at regional and village levels. Adoption is also influenced by farming systems, crop types, and perceived vulnerability to climatic hazards across all scales. At the village level, access to land and the frequency of rural migration further shape adoption patterns. Overall, the findings indicate that constraints limiting women’s engagement in SLM, access to land and labour, are evident at the national scale but vary substantially across local contexts.

While prior research has focused on the role of cause lawyers in legal and social reforms within authoritarian regimes, the everyday practices of non-cause lawyers handling controversial cases remain unexplored. Drawing on 60 interviews with family lawyers and divorced women in Iran, this study directs attention to the everyday practices of ordinary lawyers, with a focus on divorce cases initiated by women, which are among the most challenging cases in Iran’s family courts. The study introduces a typology to distinguish between lawyers who are outcome-oriented and those who are transformative-oriented. I argue that lawyers’ perceptions of professional responsibility and their understandings of what counts as “meaningful reform” in a judiciary that is unreceptive to women’s rights influence how they pursue legal mobilization against codified gender inequality within an authoritarian system. This study concludes by suggesting that future research should examine how lawyers’ interpersonal interactions, as well as their educational and professional training, shape their approaches to challenging inequality and discrimination.

The paper examines the case of branch cutters, the only female workers employed in Soviet logging brigades, focusing on the marginalization of women into physically demanding yet technologically stagnant roles. Branch cutters’ primary duty was to turn felled pine trees into logs by manually chopping off boughs, branches, and knots. By the mid-1960s, this task remained the only non-mechanized job in Soviet logging. Female branch cutters worked with axes alongside male workers equipped with modern logging equipment—chainsaws, tractors, loaders, and haulers. Adding to previous studies that highlight wage disparities and occupational segregation, this paper analyzes how labor protection regulations aimed not merely at safeguarding but also at systematically excluding women from technologically complex labor, confined them to (relatively) low-paying, dangerous, and low-status jobs. The article traces in detail how Soviet labor policies of the 1930s–1980s explored the idea of women as physically weaker workers and deliberately constructed a discourse of gendered labor based on the categories of “ease” and “hardship.” Labor protection bodies, trade unions, and enterprises constantly restricted women’s access to mechanized, high-paying jobs based on this division, bolstering their exclusion from upward mobility. The study thus expands our understanding of gendered labor dynamics in Soviet industry, illustrating how technological stratification reinforced occupational and gender segregation. By centering women’s experiences in an underexplored sector of Soviet industry, the research offers new insights into the complexities of labor inequality and gendered power structures in the Soviet Union.

We aim to raise awareness of dowry abuse as a practice, which is a lesser-known form of family violence, and highlight its profound impact on mental health in migrant communities. There remains an urgent need for action from mental healthcare providers, and additional legal and policy reforms, to address this harmful practice.

Gender inequality carries high social costs, and understanding its causes and consequences remains a pressing concern. Numerous policymakers and academics have taken on this challenge, including anthropological archaeologists. Because archaeologists create narratives about the past that can justify or question current and future actions, contemporary archaeological practice impacts everyone. This themed issue builds on recent documentations of disparities and calls to address them. To do so, contributors use a mix of quantitative and qualitative analyses, as well as novel theoretical perspectives, to understand why intersectional gender-based inequalities continue and to propose interventions to rectify them. We begin by considering the history of feminist equity critiques. We then argue that scholars should build on existing research by reconceptualizing not only difference but also exclusion. Policymakers, academics, and others must move beyond the problematic yet ubiquitous metaphor of a leaky pipeline and instead consider the active—though often unconscious and unintentional—ways individuals and institutions exclude, including through notions of fit, prestige, and the hysteresis of habitus, also known as the Don Quixote effect. The overarching goal of the themed issue, and this article, is to advocate for interventions in contemporary archaeological practice and beyond.

Despite improvement over the past few decades, particularly for white, cisgender women, intersectional gender-based inequality remains prominent within anthropological archaeology and beyond. Building on critiques of the leaky pipeline metaphor laid out in the introduction to this themed issue, and drawing on Black, Indigenous, and Posthumanist Feminisms, we advocate for a metaphorical shift focused on care, inclusivity, and diversity—that of a garden. The garden metaphor provides a way to express and explore the complex and intertwined ways disciplinary norms, institutions, and individuals structure and shape experiences in archaeology. After reviewing the garden metaphor and summarizing previous suggestions for improving equity in archaeology, we present recommendations for actionable steps at disciplinary, institutional, supervisory, and individual levels. Drawing on insights from the articles in the issue, as well as existing literature within and beyond archaeology, we argue that a greater emphasis on care, and its integration into the value structure of archaeology, would create a more inclusive discipline.

In 2024, the Women and Equalities Select Committee in the UK Parliament published a report entitled Misogyny in Music. It included the recommendations that ‘music colleges, conservatoires and other educational settings need to do more to address the gendering of instruments, roles and genres and improve the visibility of and support for female role models’. While there is a dearth of policy levers available to implement this recommendation, this article critically analyses three existing policy/regulatory frameworks that could be used for its implementation in England. The article also highlights a significant limitation of the report – its exclusion of trans and non-binary musicians.

Gender, as a sociostructural factor, may shape child development through social norms that influence family dynamics. We examined whether more egalitarian parental relationships are associated with better developmental outcomes. Using data from the Pelotas 1993 birth cohort (Brazil), we adapted a population-level gender inequality metric to characterise parental relationships. The Couple’s Gender Inequality Index (CGII) was derived from maternal health, parental education and income. Associations between CGII and educational attainment, quality of life, and depression at age 18 were assessed using linear regression models adjusted for family income, gestational age, birth weight, parental cohabitation and race. The sample comprised 2,852 participants (1,446 women). Higher CGII scores, indicating greater equality within couples, were associated with significantly higher educational attainment in both females and males. Higher quality of life at age 18 was observed in the second and fourth CGII quartiles compared with the most unequal. Greater equality was associated with lower risk of depression at age 18, although this association was not robust to adjustment. Among girls, a similar pattern was observed for emotional symptoms at age 15. Overall, greater couple-level gender inequality was associated with poorer developmental outcomes in offspring.

The increasing participation of women in the labour market has highlighted significant advancements but also inequalities that negatively impact women’s happiness and job satisfaction. This study aims to analyse the existing literature on women’s workplace happiness through a bibliometric review, identifying trends, leading authors, research areas, and critical gaps. Employing a systematic bibliometric review methodology, 307 scientific articles published between 2010 and 2024 in the Web of Science Core Collection database were examined. Findings underscore a growing focus on factors external to the work environment, such as gender roles, double shifts, stress, and mental health. Furthermore, the results reveal considerable fragmentation in scientific production and a lack of established academic benchmarks. Conclusions stress the urgent need for organizational approaches that comprehensively address these inequalities, promoting policies of reconciliation, intersectional inclusion, and emotional well-being programmes. The study offers directions for future research and practical applications for fostering more equitable organizational management.

We analyse the impact of International Monetary Fund (IMF) programmes on appointing women leaders in ministerial positions. We hypothesize that women leaders are selected after an incumbent government starts an IMF programme to shift accountability to them during political and economic turmoil. This political manoeuvring of appointing women to leadership positions during a crisis is known as the ‘glass cliff’ effect. We demonstrate substantial evidence for such a ‘glass cliff’ effect using data covering all IMF programmes from 1980 to 2018. Our evidence shows that women are more likely to be appointed to austerity‐bearing ministerial positions under IMF programmes but not in positions of authority during negotiations with the IMF. This effect is more pronounced when a country displays worse societal gender norms, a higher level of corruption and a government facing a deeper economic crisis. Importantly, we verify that neither women's leadership nor a higher share of women in government predicts a balance of payments crisis triggering an IMF programme. In other words, women leaders do not govern worse; they are appointed to leadership positions in precarious, crisis‐ridden conditions.

Publication in peer-reviewed journals is of major importance to careers in academia. It has become clear that a considerable gender gap exists in political science journal publishing and a debate on how to confront this gap has got under way. This article examines the gender distribution in publishing (1978–2021), submissions and reviewing (2015 to end of 2020) for West European Politics. We identify a gender gap in publishing, but find a more pronounced gap when it comes to submissions. Over time, there are notable changes in authorship categories. In terms of the review process, we have not found a gender gap in desk-rejects or in the double blind peer review process. However, there is a considerable gender gap in review invitations sent out. In addition, female scholars are somewhat less likely to accept invitations to review than their male colleagues. These observations are in-line with the findings of other political science journals. They underline the need for the discipline to confront, in particular, imbalances in submissions and to identify the reasons behind them, as key means to reduce gender gaps in academia.

This study addresses issues related to inequality formation and reproduction, especially in regard to gender dynamics operating in a non-western society. Grounded in a post-colonial understanding of urban educated upper and middle class women NGO volunteers in contemporary India, it analyzes how they negotiate new approaches to challenge existing traditional gender roles, yet in critical ways contribute to their reproduction, particularly the traditional concept of ideal Indian womanhood. Employing structural ritualization theory we examine how ritualized symbolic practices related to the traditional concepts of caretaking, sacrifice, and the concept of natural sexual differences continue to be emphasized in a generation confronted with conflicting expectations about modern women’s roles. Twenty-one testimonies provide the major source of evidence along with data gathered through participant observation. This research enhances our understanding of the power of rituals and how they can continue to shape the cognitions and activities of actors.

Women’s underrepresentation in top political science journals has been a central concern of both the American Political Science Association and the European Consortium of Political Research, which have promoted studies to assess the extent and features of the gender gap. However, so far in Southern Europe, research on this topic has been scarce. Our work adds to the literature by presenting new data on three journals: the Italian Political Science Review, the Spanish Political Science Review and South European Society and Politics. The research has three main goals: to gauge the gender gap in the three journals; to examine whether gender influences publication preferences; and to investigate how career intersects with gendered publication strategies. The analysis is built on a database of almost 800 articles and about 1400 authors, published in these three journals in 2011–2022. Our main findings are that South European journals reveal a gender gap similar to other international journals, where just one-third of authors are women; that this publication gap is accompanied by gendered publication strategies; and that the routes men and women follow to succeed in academic publishing diverge at every career stage. Finally, we argue that women's preferred strategies may not offer the optimum path to career success.