Week in review

Hello, glad you could join us for the Wikiprogress week in review - a handful of headlines that have caught our eyes over the last week. You can find all news articles and blog posts on the progress community in the Wikiprogress Community Portal.    

Big data

Can a country's online "mood" predict unemployment spikes? (SAS News 12.03.2012)

SAS and UN Global Pulse have analysed over two years of social media data to learn that the ‘mood’ created by conversations held on these platforms can predict increases in unemployment. Around half a million blogs, forums and news sites were used in the study, one of many in the new movement to use ‘Big Data’ for human development.

Affect our social media mood and ‘like’ our Wikiprogress Facebook page

Education

Pass the books. Hold the oil. (New York Times 11.03.2012)

The latest results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that education is a better economic driver than natural resources; students in Singapore, Finland, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan stand out as having high PISA scores and few natural resources.

See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on PISA

Japan one year on

Remembering and learning from Fukushima (UNDP 12.03.2012)

This week marked the one year anniversary of the major earthquake that struck off Japan's north-eastern coast, causing a devastating tsunami. This UNDP post explores the lessons the world needs to learn from the disaster and the importance of disaster risk reduction systems. 

See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on progress in Japan

Gender equality

Alert! Arab world women at bottom of global workforce participation (World Bank Blog 08.03.2012)

While significant progress in the MENA region is being made to close gender gaps in education and healthcare, many of the investments in human development are not equating to increased rates of female participation in economic and social life. The region has the world’s lowest labour force participation: at 25 percent it is half the world’s average.

See more and contribute to the Wikigender progress series article on achieving societal progress through increasing women’s employment opportunities

Spotlight: Putting inequality in the post 2015 picture

We hope you will tune in the same time next week. In the meantime, if anything interesting passes your desk that you would like to see in the next Wikiprogress week in review, please tweet it to us @Wikiprogress or post it on our Facebook page.

Yours in Progress,

Philippa Lysaght