One of the nice things about having a real job was a dedicated platform for sharing blog posts and accomplishments, such as papers published and studies finished. As a now very happily self-employed, independent consultant with many diverse projects, I no longer have that institutional backing for all my research (though there is for some of it, for sure), but I still have that desire to share with basically everyone when I publish a paper. I admit I am still floundering a bit without twitter. I mean, I know it’s still there and many of my friends and colleagues are still there. I had largely disconnected from it for my own sanity a year or so before new management arrived, so perhaps I shouldn’t feel its absence so strongly, but I don’t know where to share anymore. Mastodon feels empty despite an early burst of energy. Threads is, well, whatever it is. Short of texting or sending a slack message to everyone I know kind of have here, this website, anymore. And I don’t even use it that much.
So here we are! With me sharing a very long and very important paper I wrote with colleagues at the World Bank about achieving gender equality in Haiti. You might know that Haiti is having a pretty rough time right now in terms of governance, public health, violence, the aftermath of various natural disasters, and more. It felt both heart-wrenching and profoundly necessary to write about gender in Haiti because we know that as the country comes out of this crisis and rebuilds, that taking into account women’s voices, putting in place goals for gender equality, and acknowledging the pre-existing conditions that lead to rampant gender inequality and gender-based violence is necessary to build back better.
We don’t address the current crisis in this paper and the data we used are quite old because of how difficult it is to collect information right now, but I think it’s quite informative and hopefully will support policymakers as they move through this difficult time.
ERIN K. FLETCHER 