CPC celebrates International Women's Day 2021

International Women's Day is an annual celebration of the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, held on 8 March. The theme of the UN’s International Women’s Day for 2021 is “Choose to Challenge” and represents the need to challenge global gender bias and inequality.

At the ESRC Centre for Population Change, we are dedicated to empowering women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) to achieve their goals and to highlight research that can improve the lives of women around the world.

Women at CPC are recognised for excellence in their field, and a recent article from the Daily Echo highlights the work of Professor Athina Vlachantoni. Her research interests include ageing, gender and social policy. She is a member of the University of Southampton’s Centre for Research on Ageing (CRA), and works closely with the South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership to help support the next generation of social scientists.

From our female-led senior management team, to lobbying policy makers about issues that disproportionately affect women, we hope to balance gender inequality. Issues affecting women do not exist in a vacuum but impact all aspects of our society. By highlighting gender imbalances, we can ensure policy makers are equipped with the knowledge to improve society for everyone.

To celebrate this year’s International Women’s Day, we are focussing on the achievements of CPC Director, Professor Jane Falkingham OBE, and CPC’s migration strand joint co-ordinator, Professor Jackline Wahba OBE. Both have been recognised as Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), a prestigious award as part of the British honours system, recognising people who have made achievements in public life or who have committed themselves to serving and helping Britain. They’ll usually have made life better for other people or be outstanding at what they do.

Jackline Wahba

Jackline Wahba OBE is a Professor of Economics at the University of Southampton and one of the leading voices on the economics of migration. She was awarded an OBE for services to Economic Policy in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for 2020.

Professor Wahba has overcome gender barriers to lead in a male dominated subject. Through her ground-breaking research, she has highlighted the contribution of migrants, both in the destination country and also in their country of origin. Her work has been instrumental in shaping the narrative around the positive role of migrants and migration.

Since achieving her PhD in Economics from the University of Southampton, she has remained with the University throughout her academic career, building her scientific standing as well as that of the University’s economics department. Her cutting-edge research on the economics of migration has highlighted the value of skilled migrants to the UK and other nations alongside the vital role remittances play in the well-being of those ‘left behind’. Most recently, Professor Wahba has been working with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Universities UK (UUK), helping them to understand the post-study intentions of graduating international students. This work has helped to refine the measurement of international student migration in government statistics.

In 2020, Professor Wahba was part of a research team from CPC that won the ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize for Outstanding Public Policy Impact. The award recognised the Centre’s outstanding contributions to public policy which have improved estimates of the current and future population of the UK. These improvements have provided national and local policy-makers, planners and businesses with better evidence for policies and services.

Since 2012, Professor Wahba has used her expertise as a member of the government's Migration Advisory Committee (MAC). The MAC is an independent public body that advises the government on migration issues and is sponsored by the Home Office. She has also advised national governments and international organisations, including the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation, the International Labour Organisation, the International Organisation for Migration, the European Training Foundation and the European Commission. She was also recently elected as a member of the Council of the Royal Economic Society.

As well as a professor for the University of Southampton, Jackie is a member of the ESRC Centre for Population Change research group, a research fellow of the Economic Research Forum (ERF), the Centre for Research & Analysis of Migration (CReAM) and the IZA Institute of Labour Economics. She is also a member of the Expert Advisory Board for the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.

Jane Falkingham

Jane Falkingham OBE is a Professor of Demography and International Social Policy at the University of Southampton. She is also Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Southampton, and Director of the ESRC Centre for Population Change. She was awarded an OBE for services to Social Science in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for 2015.

Through her research, Professor Falkingham has changed the discourse on women and older people. Her work has actively highlighted the positive role women play in society as daughters, mothers, partners and employees, as well as demonstrating the often overlooked contribution of older people.

Her work pursues a multi-disciplinary research agenda combining social policy and population studies, and spanning both developed and developing countries. Much of it focusses on the social policy implications of population ageing and demographic change, and what this means for the distribution of social and economic welfare.

As well as studying UK population, she is also involved in wide-reaching international research including projects on ageing and resilience in the slums of Nairobi, poverty and transition in Central Asia and on migration and the wellbeing of children and older people ‘left behind’ in China and South Africa.

Professor Falkingham’s career story is particularly inspiring given the gender and class barriers she has faced; she grew up in a single parent household in a deprived area and has gone on to have an esteemed career, holding leadership roles at a Russell Group university. She spent the first 21 years of her academic career at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She joined the University of Southampton in 2002 as a Professor, becoming Head of the School of Social Sciences in 2010 and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences in 2014. She is a part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Executive Committee as a member of the Economic and Social Research Council, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Society of Arts. In 2018 she was elected President of the European Association of Population Studies (EAPS). She was President of the British Society for Population Studies between 2015 and 2017.

In 2020, Professor Falkingham and her team from CPC won the ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize for Outstanding Public Policy Impact. The award recognised her work as Director of CPC since 2009, and the Centre’s outstanding contributions to public policy.

Further Reading
We hope you enjoyed the above profiles. Find out more about latest CPC research on the issues affecting women below:

• Gender attitudes and practices among married and cohabiting parents
Compared to their married counterparts, cohabitors tend to be more liberal in their attitudes towards gender roles. However, cohabiting households also tend to be less affluent and therefore they often have no choice in how they divide household responsibilities due to expensive childcare or employment conditions.
• Teenage Pregnancy
Declining rates of teenage pregnancies in England are related to local areas experiencing less youth unemployment, growing Black or South Asian teenage populations, more educational attainment, unaffordable housing, and a lack of available social housing, a recent ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC) study has found.
• Households where the woman is the sole earner are significantly poorer
The ESRC research project ‘Female Breadwinner Families in Europe’ has been shedding light on the economic characteristics of female-breadwinner couples using data from the Luxembourg Income Study.

• Estimating Fertility
Fertility is the most important of the three components for determining global population change. Demographers have known for decades that the total fertility rate, a measure used to calculate the number of children a woman would have in her lifetime, has been declining around the world.

• Who's been losing sleep during lockdown?
The proportion of women losing sleep over worry before the pandemic was 18.9%, rising to 31% during the pandemic. These findings are in-line with much of the emerging research that suggests experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK have been very different for men and women.
• Furlough makes couples’ relationships stronger
The UK government’s furlough scheme has allowed many couples the time and flexibility for a better work-life balance, strengthening their relationships.
• Covid-19 spells trouble for millions of couples as study finds unemployment damages relationships
Spells of unemployment can damage romantic relationships in both the short- and long- term, and are particularly disruptive for women, a recent study has found.
• Abortion as telemedicine consultation
During the covid-19 epidemic, the UK government temporarily approved the use of medication abortion (that is, inducing an abortion using mifepristone and misoprostol pills) at home after a telephone or online consultation with a clinician. CPC researcher Heini Vaisanen is part of the team of abortion research experts, who have researched that the introduction of telemedicine has been beneficial and should be continued.

Stay in touch
For future updates about our research:
• Sign up for our biannual newsletter “Changing Populations”
• Find our future events
• Follow us on Twitter and Facebook

Posted 05/03/2021 11:43