Social Media for Girls: The Potential is Explosive

As part of the Wikiprogress on Gender Equality series, this progblog article by Girl Effect focuses on the power of social media to empower girls in Africa and around the world.

Image courtesy of Girl Effect

Social media is a powerful tool in today's world - it connects people across continents and has affected massive social and cultural change. I believe that for girls in particular, the potential it holds is explosive.

Working as a female entrepreneur in Nigeria, I've been able to see first-hand how using it smartly is one of the best ways to overcome communication barriers.  This week, I'll be at Social Media Week Lagos, discussing how social media has the power to change the lives of adolescent girls. As part of the ' Mobilize! Social Media For Social Change' event hosted by Girl Effect, I'll be debating how tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have given Nigerian girls the opportunity to use social media to take part in the global development dialogue.

The importance of social media is clear to me. I'm always using platforms like LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook to make contacts, create links and develop relationships with others. Tools like these expand the communication and engagement I have with those around me, giving me the chance to join the right groups, meet the right people and get my voice out there.

Networking with others on LinkedIn is absolutely crucial in my professional life - it gives me the chance to reach out to new projects and opportunities, as well as share my experiences with influential professionals. On a more personal level, using Facebook means that I can connect to old classmates, friends and family, plus keep them up to date with what's going on in my life on a regular basis.

The same benefits apply to girls, as there are huge opportunities available to them as a result of using social media.

Social media should not just be seen as social networking and having fun. It is fun, but there's also an art to getting it right, and I think it's important that girls discover how they can make their communication with the wider world successful. When used effectively, social media gives them a voice, helps create noise around a cause and brings both local and global attention to issues that matter to them.

An example of how this can be done is the youth social media advocacy campaign I am championing, which uses social media to educate, inform and empower young girls. With programmes like these, girls can learn how to use social media to their advantage; be it to further their career, meet influential business people or simply have their voice heard - learning these skills is vital to them.

Social media is also cheaper - a lot cheaper - than the alternatives. You can reach 1,000 people through the power of social media for a fraction of the cost that you can through television or print. It's also interactive and this two-way relationship is key to the power of social media, and therefore key to the argument for girls using it more.

Through conversations that they can now have with high-level decision makers, NGOs and policy-makers, girls can affect the global agenda for change.

Girls have the potential to be an incredible force in the social media world. By using the technology in the best way possible, they will be able to change their lives and the lives of generations of girls to come.

Find out more about equipping girls to change the world

Follow Girl Effect's session at Social Media Week Lagos using the hash tag #SMWMobilize

Find out more about Girl Effect's session at Social Media Week Lagos

To read more articles on Gender Well-being check out our Wikiprogress on Gender Equality Page and we look forward to bringing you more similarly themed articles for the rest of this week.

The Wikiprogress Team 

@Wikprogress @Wikigender @Wiki_child

Summary of the Brazilian National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) 2011: income growth was higher in the lower income classes

Source:  www.ibge.gov.br

The Brazilian National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) studies on an annual and permanent basis the general characteristics of the population, education, employment, income, housing and other, with variable periodicity, according to the information needs of Brazil, such as migration, fecundity, marriage status, health, food security, among other themes. The PNAD 2011 shows that from 2009 to 2011, the real average monthly income grew 8.3%. By income brackets, the largest increase in income (29.2%) was seen in the 10% with lower incomes. Overall, there was a reduction in income growth as its value increased.

PNAD 2011 shows the Gini coefficient in Brazil decreased from 0.518 in 2009 to 0.501 in 2011. Regionally, only the North saw an increase, from 0.488 in 2009 to 0.496 in 2011. In other regions the increase in income was higher for the poorest, and lower for the 10% with the highest incomes. A more significant reduction was seen in the South (from 0.482 to 0.461).

The real average monthly income of permanent households was estimated at R$ 2,419.00 in 2011, representing a real gain of 3.3% compared to 2009 (R$ 2,341.00). There was an increase of household income in all major regions. The Northeast had the lowest variation (2.0%) compared to 2009, as well as the lowest value (R$ 1,607.00).

Women's income amounted to 70.4% of men's income. In 2011, the real average monthly income of men was R$ 1,417.00 and of women was R$ 997.00. Proportionally, women received 70.4%. In 2009, the proportion was 67.1%. In addition, there were proportionally more women employed without income or only receiving benefits (10.0%) than men (5.8%).

Formal jobs increased 11.8% from 2009 to 2011. From 2009 to 2011, there was an increase of 3.6 million employees with a formal contract in the private sector. 74.6% employees in the private sector had a formal contract. The income of employed people grew from R$ 1,242.00 to R$ 1,345.00, from 2009 to 2011. From 2009 to 2011, income of domestic workers without a formal contract increased 15.2%.

There are an increased number of workers with high school and university diplomas. From 2009 to 2011, the employed population increased the percentage of workers with at least secondary education (43.7% to 46.8%) and workers with at least a university degree (from 11.3% to 12.5%), while the percentage of workers with incomplete primary education fell from 31.8% to 25.5%.

There is an increased number of employed people in the sectors of services, trade and construction. The number rose 5.2% in the service sector (41.5 million people), 1.9% in trade and repair (16.5 million) and 13.6% in construction (7.8 million), 2009 to 2011, while falls were recorded from -7.3% in the agricultural sector (14.1 million) and -8.0% in manufacturing (12.4 million).

The increase of employed people in 2011, associated with the reduction of unemployed, brought as a result a significant drop in the unemployment rate, which fell from 8.2% in 2009 to 6.7% in 2011. In the South, PNAD saw the lowest unemployment rate (4.3%) and the highest in the Northeast (7.9%). In 2011, approximately 6.6 million people were unemployed. Despite the significant drop in the unemployment rate in Brazil, a greater difficulty in entering the labor market still persists, for some groups. Of the unemployed, 59.0% were women, 35.1% had never worked; 33.9% were between 18 and 24 years old, 57.6% were black or brown and 53.6% of them had not completed school. PNAD also confirmed the downward trend in child labor (5-17 years) in 2011. In two years, there was a reduction of 14%. However, child labor reaches 3.7 million.

It was observed that the illiteracy rate among people aged 15 or older in Brazil in 2011 was 8.6% (12.9 million illiterates), 1.1 percentage points less than in 2009 (9,7%, 14.1 million illiterates). 96.1% of the illiterate had 25 years or older. Of this group, over 60% were 50 years or older (8.2 million).

Women are more educated than men, especially between 20 and 24 years of age.  In 2011, the population aged 10 years or older had an average of 7.3 years of study. Women, in general, were more educated than men, with an average of 7.5 years of schooling, while men had 7.1 years of schooling.

From 2009 to 2011, the school enrollment rate of children between 6 and 14 years old increased by 0.6 percentage points, reaching 98.2%. As for young people between 15 and 17 years, the percentage dropped from 85.2% to 83.7%, in the same period.

In 2011, the resident population in Brazil was estimated to be at 195.2 million, an increase of 1.8% (3.5 million) compared to 2009. Women represented 51.5% (100.5 million) of the population and men 48.5% (94.7 million). People 29 years old or younger accounted for 48.6% of the population and those that are 60 years old or older, 12.1% in 2009, these values were, respectively, 50.2% and 11.3%, indicating that the population is having an aging trend.

This and other information can be viewed in full in the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) 2011(in Portuguese)

The week in review

The week in review 17.02.2012

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   

On Big Data
Digital signals and global pulse (UN Global Pulse 15.02.2012)
For the first time in history, Big Data allows us a real time understanding of a negative trend as it is happening and enables us to inform policies to help prevent harm before it’s too late.

On child well-being

New Report: A Life Free from Hunger: Tackling child malnutrition. What are the causes of malnutrition, the solutions, and the politics? This new report by Save the Children sets out six steps to tackle the crisis.

See more and contribute to Wikichild Child Well-being Portal

On Amartya Sen

Sen, the moral universalist  (The Hindu 15.02.2012)

Amartya Sen was awarded The United States National Medal of Arts and Humanities earlier this week. He is the first non-American to receive the rare award.  Of his many achievements, Prof. Sen has been recognised for his role in driving the movement of human development and well-being measures.

See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress

On the cost of living

The cost of living across the globe  (The Economist 13.02.2012)

The Economist Intelligence Unit has released the findings of the latest worldwide cost of living survey, identifying the world’s most expensive city to live in. And the winner is…. Zurich, followed closely by Tokyo and Oslo.

See more on progress by country on the interactive Wikiprogress world map

On progress

Why profit-led growth is a myth  (The Guardian 14.02.2012)

In an analysis of the recently released World of Work Report 2011: Making markets work for jobs  by the International Labour Organisation, Guardian blogger Jayati Ghosh demonstrates how profit-led economic strategy doesn’t work; she argues that the world needs is job-based growth.

See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on employment rates

On gender equality

Online discussion: Empowering Rural Women

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 . 

The 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 .  

On progress in Australia
Australia's national statistician prefers a "dashboard" approach to well-being  (15.12.2011)
Imogen Wall from the Measures of Australia’s Progress team at the Australian Bureau of Statistics uses a dashboard metaphor to describe the importance of using a range of indicators for measuring well-being, “It is important, when driving, to have information not only about speed and distance travelled, but also about engine temperature and remaining petrol.”
See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on Measures of Australia’s Progress

On gender equality
An African Gender Statistics Group in the offing  (13.12.2011)
In an address to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Ghana Statistical Service, Dr Grace Bediako announced plans for an African Gender Statistics Group that aims to mainstream gender into national and international statistics programmes.
See more and contribute to the Wikigender article on Gender Statistics



On the environment
Time for a Green Index  (13.12.2011)
Professor of Environmental Science Chuluun Togtokh argues that the UNDP Human Development Index ‘idolises’ some of the most environmentally damaging societies and suggests replacing the index with one that considers green technologies. He has found that per capita carbon emissions are a simple and quantifiable indicator, which is both strongly and positively, correlated with income.
See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on green growth

On employment
Jobs, or more precisely, the lack of jobs is now a global issue (World Bank 26.09.2011)
The World Bank blogs on a pressing global issue: unemployment. It is more than the 205 million people worldwide who are unemployed, it is that in today’s post-crisis world policy makers and practitioners do not know how to create jobs, let alone good jobs.
See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on unemployment rates


In the spotlight
TIME 2011 Person of the Year: The Protester:  Why I Protest: Ahmed Harara of Egypt (TIME 14.12.2011)

In announcing the 2011 person of the year as The Protester, TIME has profiled a series of protesters involved the the various uprisings of 2011. Ahmed Harara was protesting in Tahrir Square in January when he lost his eye to a rubber bullet; ten months later he returned to Tahrir Square only to lose the other eye in the same way.
See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on the Arab Spring


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

7 billion human beings: Why gender equality matters more than ever!

This post by Angela Luci first appeared on Gender Debate.

The United Nations Population Division estimates that the world's population reached 7 billion around October 31, 2011. This milestone has an important impact on the worldwide economic and social equilibrium. Gender equality represents a major factor allowing countries to bear the challenges and to benefit from the opportunities of demographic dynamics. 

The recent birth of the 7^th billion human being has been registered with mixed feelings all over the world.  The exponential population growth that could have been observed over the last 50 years as well as the UN projections for the future global population size are perceived as quite frightening in most countries. Indeed, the actual population size and the future population growth represent enormous challenges for countries of all development stages.

Image: genderdebate.com

In developing countries, and particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, a first important challenge is to provide an adequate agricultural organization to avoid famine, to provide clean water and to protect the environment.  Improving the access to health and education is another major challenge. This is where gender equality comes into play. Especially for girls and young women,  access to family planning, to contraception, to education and to the formal labour market is crucial not only for improving their own living conditions, but also in terms  of demographic dynamics.  Fertility and child mortality can be significantly reduced by fostering women’s economic empowerment and by containing patriarchal social norms (inheritance laws, genital mutilation, limited freedom of movement etc…). In addition, an improved access to education for girls and boys allows developing countries to exploit their enormous growth potential that comes along with the high proportion of young people at working age (demographic bonus).

In emerging countries, rapid industrialization and urbanization represent a major development challenge as these phenomena risk coming along with environmental damage, slum formation, unemployment, loose family networks, drug abuse and youth criminality. In this context, improving women’s access to the formal labour market as well as to health care and education is particularly important, as investments in these areas are likely to lead to later marriages, less teenage pregnancies and more stable family structures. This helps accelerating the trend to smaller families and boosts investments in the education and health of children. Providing economic and educational opportunities for women thus leads to a win-win situation for all of society.

In developed countries, low fertility and high life expectancy represent the major demographic challenges. Population ageing certainly is a worldwide phenomenon, but implies a particular problem for developed countries, as the current low fertility rates make it difficult to finance pay-as-you go pension systems in the next future. Providing women with possibilities to combine work and family life has been identified as an important factor to enable parents to realize their fertility intentions. Moreover, providing women with an independent income, which allows them to make adequate social security contributions and private savings, can be seen as the best instrument to battle old-age poverty in developed countries (which concerns mainly women).

Hence, women's access to decent jobs with income and career perspectives emerges as a key factor to tackle the challenges of demographic dynamics. This holds for developed countries as much as for emerging and developing countries. 

This article was inspired by the symposium “The Seven Billionth Human: What Does This Birth Mean” on October 14, 2011, organized by the Hopkins Population Center and the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health.

Covering the “missing middle” in social protection

by Juan R. de Laiglesia from the OECD Development Centre 

Providing social protection to the informal middle classes will foster social cohesion, and doesn’t cost the earth.

As citizens across the globe demand new economic models, the OECD’s newly released Perspectives on Global Development 2012 puts social cohesion on the table as a broader social development objective. Social cohesion compounds inclusiveness, equal opportunity and a sense of belonging to society, of shared destinies. Strong growth in a large part of the developing world has transformed the ways development challenges can be addressed. 

The final declaration of the 4^th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Busan last week reminds us that poverty and inequality remain a central challenge in global development.  The OECD’s Perspectives on Global Development 2012 find that 83 countries more than doubled OECD per capita growth rates over the past decade. You would be right to think that faster than 1.8% growth is hardly impressive; but in fact 49 countries grew at more than 3.75%. In the 1990s, only 12 countries managed that.

How growth has changed the picture

First, the poor no longer live mostly in poor countries. Research by Andy Sumner,  at the Institute for Development Studies , finds that 70% of the world’s poor live in middle income countries. Two decades ago, 93% of the poor lived in Low Income Countries. This means that most of the poor live in countries where per capita incomes are above USD 2.75 a day, and more in purchasing parity terms. In other words, more countries can use redistributive instruments – from taxes to transfers to health provision – to eradicate poverty. Indeed, countries such as India or China have up-scaled social protection interventions in recent years.

Second, millions have been lifted out of poverty as average incomes have increased and emerged as a new – but vulnerable ­– middle class. As a result, half of the 2bn-strong global middle class live in emerging economies. But make no mistake, this middle class is unlike Western stereotypes of a couple with two children, a dog and one or two cars.  The emerging middle classes are vulnerable: many remain only just above the poverty line and do not have a stock of capital that would allow them to buffer major shocks such as illness nor to whether the changes in fortunes which come with old age. In Latin America, less than 10% of households have mortgage loans, and less than half of them are middle-class. Many in the emerging middle classes work informally. And yet, not being poor, they have the capacity to save and contribute to social insurance. Social protection plays a key role in buttressing their middle class status and preventing them from slipping back into poverty.

Social protection redux

Is this a job for social protection? In the past few years, the discourse around the role of social protection in development has changed dramatically. Through the work of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, the donor community has clearly stated the role of social protection in making growth pro-poor. Last month, the Social Protection Floor Advisory Group, chaired by Michelle Bachelet released its report entitled Social Protection Floor for a Fair and Inclusive Globalization. Social protection has moved from being viewed as merely a “safety net” built of targeted assistance to the poor to a key instrument in building fairer societies.

The past ten years have seen a true “quiet revolution” in social protection in the developing world. The rapid introduction of means-tested cash benefits has greatly increased the scale of social protection. South Africa’s Child Support Grant, introduced in 1998 covered 7.7 million children by 2008, China’s Minimum Living Subsidy Scheme (DiBao) was introduced in 1997 and reached 57 million households by 2007. The very popular conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes in Mexico (Oportunidades) and Brazil (Bolsa Família) reach respectively 5 and 12.5 million households or about a quarter of the population in each country. The beauty of this quantum leap is that it has been made using home-grown instruments, tried and tested across developing countries. Often these new programmes coexist with contribution-based social security systems that cover formal employees.

The “missing middle”: a challenge for social cohesion

Put together, contribution-based social security and means-tested social protection for the poor leave a “missing middle” in social protection coverage. Indeed, research at the OECD Development Centre shows that the majority of middle-class workers in emerging economies such as Brazil  or Mexico are not formal employees.  Contributory pensions are open to independent workers and informal employees – those without contracts – but in practice only a minority participate in them. In the case of Brazil only 15% of the self-employed and 9% of informal employees in the middle income quintiles contribute to pensions systems.

Providing adequate instruments for the informal middle classes to insure or manage risk matters for social cohesion. First because today’s vulnerable middle class can become tomorrow’s poor. Many in the emerging middle classes lie close to the poverty line and can fall back in downturns. Second, it is a matter of horizontal equity. Social protection is a form of institutionalized solidarity: excluding certain categories from social protection deprives them of risk management instruments which are usually not available in the private market. Moreover, it runs the risk of alienating that segment of society. Finally, the middle classes have an important role to play in shaping the politics of poverty reduction. How likely are the informal middle classes to side with the poor on redistribution issues if they do not partake in the system that protects the poor?

Extending protection: more than one way forward

Social protection can be extended to cover the informal middle classes in several ways. Unbundling health, pensions and the other functions of social security helps, because they can be priced and provided separately. Contributory pensions and Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts as implemented in Chile are examples of such unbundling. Certain instruments, like UISAs (compulsory savings accounts from which withdrawals are made during unemployment spells) can be extended to informal workers. Since they pool little risk across workers, they do not entail cross-subsidies or generate incentives to stay out of formal work. Subsidising contributions to the social security system is also possible – for example by governments’ matching deposits into retirement accounts. Matching-defined contribution pensions following that model are being implemented in Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Universal entitlements are also used today across the developing world, especially for basic healthcare and pension income.  In all cases, the key is to break the dichotomy between a social protection system for formal workers and one – or none – for informal workers. Such duality reinforces the segmentation between labour markets and contributes to deepen the fault line between formal and informal workers.

At stake is building a social protection system that not only alleviates poverty, but empowers citizens to build up and protect human capital and to participate in networks of organised solidarity. The past decade saw the emergence of a number of innovative instruments in social protection, born and bred in the South. Making inclusive systems out of these and other innovations remains work in progress.

On the Practical Politics of Well-being

By Dr Sorcha Mahoney of the new economics foundation Centre for Well-being.

Last month the Centre for Well-being at nef (the new economics foundation) launched its latest pamphlet: The Practical Politics of Well-being. At the heart of this pamphlet is the idea that the well-being agenda has the potential to resonate across the political spectrum and appeal to those on the left, right and centre ground of politics in the UK. This is important; we believe that no matter which political party is in power, having high well-being for all as a basic orienting principle for policy making and political decision making can help to deliver improved well-being for UK citizens.

In this vein, The Practical Politics of Well-being presents personal contributions from a Labour (left wing), Liberal Democrat (centre) and Conservative (right wing) perspective on the well-being agenda and how this relates to particular party political principles. In his paper, Michael Jacobs argues that well-being provides a new justification and a new language for goals that Labour already espouses, whilst noting the difficulty of creating public support for the provision of public goods – a necessary pre-cursor for high well-being – and the major challenge that well-being science poses to decisions around economic and employment policy. In her paper, Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson argues that liberals and Liberal Democrats have also long appreciated well-being as an important goal of policy, whilst noting that findings from well-being science may bolster certain liberal principles and pose a challenge to others, which implies a need to consider how well-being sits alongside other key liberal values. In his paper, conservative commentator Jonty Olliff-Cooper notes that whilst Conservative backing of the well-being agenda may at first seem strange, conservatives – whichever strand of conservatism they represent – are interested in how the individual’s well-being can be maximised. He argues that well-being offers one possible route to turning conservative thinking into a practical guide for action.

Acknowledging and harnessing cross-party support for the well-being agenda is an important part of ensuring its practical application. In the UK, moves are now well underway to measure well-being at the national level. Last week the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its first round of test statistics on well-being from its Opinions Survey, and since April 2011 it has included four subjective questions in its annual Integrated Household Survey, which probes the well-being and circumstances of some 200,000 people in the UK. These questions are about how satisfied people are with their lives, how happy they were yesterday, how anxious they were yesterday, and how worthwhile they think the things they do are. The survey also asks a large number of questions about objective circumstances that are influenced by policy, for example health behaviours, housing, education, household income, employment patterns and benefit entitlements. With such information the way is paved for policy makers and political decision makers – of whichever political persuasion – to ask about the likely impacts of particular policies on well-being, and to make policies and decisions in a way designed to maximise well-being. This in turn implies potential changes to policy, some of which might be painful and resisted, whilst others will be less controversial.

Equally as important, however, is our contention – explicit in the pamphlet – that there is a need to change the central dynamic of our society. The current dynamic is inherently flawed. Without doing this, the danger is that despite small, incremental changes to policy and political decision making, the central dynamic will remain unchanged, and that in this the well-being agenda will be no more than a band aid for patching up the cracks in a fundamentally flawed system.

Whilst the well-being agenda appeals to people across the political spectrum, if we are to take it seriously this will mean not only ensuring that policy-making and political decision making at the margins are driven by well-being evidence, but designing core economic policies with well-being in mind.