Gender Policy Journal
The Gender Policy Journal was a student-run publication at the Harvard Kennedy School that published interdisciplinary work on gender policy, gendered power dynamics, and gender-based systems of oppression, including patriarchy and white supremacy. The Gender Policy Journal was originally founded in 2001 as the Women’s Policy Journal and was revived in 2017 after a 5-year hiatus before being re-named in 2021.
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Women in Leadership: Gender Equity and Breaking the Glass Ceiling Amidst a Pandemic
02.27.21
“You are young, pretty and have all the time in world. Don’t rush to a promotion. Sometimes you have to take two to three steps back to take a step forward.” I can’t imagine he’d say this to the white male colleague waiting around the corner from his office. This is what a Senior UN […]

How inclusive is the green economy?
01.26.21
Amanda, Rose, Emily and Rani are four final year Master’s in Public Policy Students at the Harvard Kennedy School dedicated to dismantling systems of oppression and creating an inclusive climate industry. They created this website to highlight the gender and racial gaps in the climate industry. [iframe src=”https://ranimurali412.github.io/code4policy-team-a1/” width=”100%” height=”1000″ scrolling=”auto” ]

Gatekeeping Power: The Case for Desegregating Male-Exclusive Fraternities
01.22.21
In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka struck down racial segregation as unconstitutional. The understanding that moved the Supreme Court to overturn the precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson involved recognizing the harms dealt by a philosophy of racial exclusion grounded in the belief that separate could be equal. And while American society […]

Flame Bearers with Becky Sauerbrunn (USA): Soccer and Equal Pay
01.5.21
Flame Bearers: The Women Athletes Carrying Tokyo’s Torch brings 2021 female Olympians’ and Paralympians’ experiences to life, giving them a platform of celebration and an opportunity to share their learnings. Its purpose is to provide opportunity for both athletes and listeners alike: For women Olympians and Paralympians to share their dreams, struggles, and lessons of mental […]

This Thanksgiving, Decolonize Your Bookshelf: A Reading List of Native American Women
11.25.20
Every year, as the leaves turn and the temperature drops, school children across the United States learn the story of the first Thanksgiving. They bring home construction paper turkeys, alongside tales of friendship, alliance, and the “Indians” welcoming the pilgrims to their land. Here begins a fundamental misunderstanding of our country’s history – one that […]

The Room Where it Happens: Women in Democratic Politics in the United States
10.19.20
To the outsider, it may appear that a long-delayed reckoning with sexism is finally occurring within the Democratic party. In the past two years, women drove the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, the head of the National Institutes of Health declared an end to all-male panels, and women now make up the majority […]

Technology’s impingement on the urban female sanitation worker in India
07.29.20
While three-fourths of the world’s population has access to a basic sanitation service, only about half of the world’s population uses a safely managed sanitation service. Over the last decade, the Government of India has strived to increase access to sanitation, building 100 million additional toilets in rural India over the last five years under […]

More Than a Numbers Game: Gender Quotas in Africa’s Parliaments
07.9.20
2020 MARKS THE twenty-fifth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a seminal moment when world leaders committed to key principles that still guide global action to advance women’s rights.[i] The platform called for greater representation of women in all spheres of society and, more specifically, for countries to establish goals for gender […]

The Indian Ban on Commercial Surrogacy
06.19.20
Introduction The usage of assisted reproductive technology (ART) has grown immensely around the world, and future increases are expected.[i] The global market is expected to grow at the compound annual growth rate of 10 percent until 2025.[ii] Surrogacy, the process of a surrogate mother carrying and delivering a child on someone else’s behalf, is […]

It’s Time for a U.S. Feminist Foreign Policy
06.15.20
Women leaders around the world are being disproportionately recognized for their skilled responses to the coronavirus crisis. These women have led compassionately and collaboratively, and put individuals—other women, in particular—at the center of their policymaking and response efforts, to incredible impact. Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, for example, has grabbed global headlines […]

COVID-19: Making Visible the Invisible Survivor
06.2.20
The COVID-19 pandemic has left more than half of humanity confined to their homes. Governments have asked and, in some cases, enforced that individuals stay home based on the assumption that their citizens face the fewest health risks there. This is not always the case. Many governments have forgotten an already vulnerable group – […]

Solitary Confinement is Torture, Not Protection
03.5.20
Ellie,[1] a young trans woman from Central America, sits across a small table from me in blue men’s scrubs, hair cut short and eyes downcast. It’s taken hours to shuffle her from the solitary confinement unit to this cold, windowless room, where I am to help her prepare her pro se asylum case. She’s […]