How hateful rhetoric connects to real-world violence |
- Could Ukraine be Putin’s Afghanistan?
- Better teacher feedback can happen outside of the evaluation process
- How do we solve social media’s eating disorder problem?
- Hutchins Roundup: Work hours, natural rate of unemployment, and more
- President Biden, tear down those walls and let immigrants take jobs in high demand
- It is not yet Uhuru for the women of Uganda
| Could Ukraine be Putin’s Afghanistan? Posted: 24 Feb 2022 09:49 AM PST By Bruce Riedel Even before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine earlier today, several commentators, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, argued convincingly that a Russian occupation of more of Ukraine, perhaps including Kyiv, would lead to an insurgency like that which the Soviet Union faced in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Defeat in Afghanistan was a major factor in the break-up of the Warsaw Pact and ultimately the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." It is important to understand how the Soviets were defeated by the mujahideen in the 1980s to understand if Ukraine could be a repeat. The Afghan resistance did virtually all the fighting against the Russian 40th Army that occupied Afghanistan starting on Christmas Eve 1979. I was in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations center in Langley, Virginia when the Soviets seized Kabul. The resistance was massive and spontaneous. But the Afghans were not alone. President Jimmy Carter rapidly mobilized a strategic alliance to fight the Russians. Within two weeks he had persuaded Pakistani leader Zia ul-Huq to support the mujahideen with refuge, bases, and training in Pakistan. The United States and Saudi Arabia would jointly fund the insurgency. The Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), would be the patrons of the mujahideen; the CIA and the Saudi intelligence service would be the financiers and quarter masters of the war. No CIA officer ever was deployed in Cold War Afghanistan. Our British counterparts, MI6, did send officers into Afghanistan to deliver select weapons and training. The ISI did all the rest; it was Zia's war. The ISI trained and occasionally led the mujahideen in battle, even striking into Soviet Central Asia. Being the frontline state behind the mujahideen brought considerable risk and danger for Pakistan. The Russians supported Pakistani dissidents who organized terror attacks inside the country including hijacking Pakistani civilian aircraft and attempts to assassinate Zia (who died in a suspicious plane crash in 1988). Pakistani fighters engaged Soviet aircraft in dogfights. The Pakistani tribal border areas became dangerous and unruly. A Kalashnikov culture emerged that still haunts Pakistan today. For Washington and Riyadh, the operation was fairly inexpensive. The Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, has recently written that the Saudis spent $2.7 billion supporting the Afghans; the CIA spent about the same. Saudi private sources led by then-governor of Riyadh province, now King Salman, raised another $4 billion for the rebels. Saudi citizens including Osama bin Laden joined the mujahideen but very few actually engaged in combat. The Afghan people paid a horrible cost for the war. As I wrote in "What We Won: America's Secret War in Afghanistan," at least a million Afghans died, five million became refugees in Pakistan and Iran, and millions more were displaced in their own country. But they won. The Soviets never sent enough soldiers to defeat the insurgents and could not recruit enough Afghans to fight with them. The Pakistanis were not intimidated by the Russians. The Afghan people fought for their independence. The Afghan analogy offers important questions for the new war in Ukraine. Which state or states will be the frontline sponsor? Are they ready to take the heat from Russia? How much support will the United States and NATO provide? Will the insurgency spark a broader conflict, and can it be contained? Are Ukrainians prepared to pay the price? Poland and Romania are the states closest to the Ukraine. Both are NATO members with U.S. troops deployed in their territory. The U.S. has an explicit commitment to come to their defense in Article Five of the NATO Treaty; we had no such commitment to Pakistan. (Ironically, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is in Moscow this week for a long-planned visit.) I believe the United States and NATO should help the Ukrainian resistance but we should understand the potential consequences, risks, and costs up front. Putin's decision to attack Ukraine could well prove to be another geopolitical catastrophe for Russia but only if we help the Ukrainian resistance. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Better teacher feedback can happen outside of the evaluation process Posted: 24 Feb 2022 09:10 AM PST By Matthew A. Kraft Over the last decade, nearly every state in the U.S. implemented major reforms to its teacher evaluation systems. These reforms sought to use evaluation for two purposes: 1) to inform personnel decisions, such as rewarding highly effective teachers and removing ineffective ones, and 2) to provide feedback to teachers to help them improve their practice. The idea was appealing—two birds, one stone. But new evidence undermines that idea. A recent study by Alvin Christian and me suggests that new evaluation systems have not been able to produce high-quality evaluation feedback at scale. Providing feedback to teachers is a worthy investment, but we suspect it would be more effective to focus the evaluation system on career decisions and provide the most formative feedback outside of the evaluation process. Our research is the result of a partnership with Boston Public Schools (BPS) to study their efforts to improve the feedback administrators provided to teachers as part of the formal evaluation process. We first sought to simply gauge teachers' perceptions of the evaluation feedback they had received through surveys. Teachers generally reported that evaluators were trustworthy, fair, and accurate, but that they struggled to provide high-quality feedback. Ultimately, only one out of four felt that evaluation feedback helped them improve their practice. In fact, most new evaluation systems require very few observations and do not mandate post-observation meetings where evaluators discuss their feedback with teachers in-person. Often, feedback was limited to a single formal written evaluation that teachers received at the end of the year. The infrequent and ineffective nature of formal feedback should come as no surprise. Most districts have added the responsibility of conducting time-intensive teacher observations to administrators' existing tasks without providing additional support or training to develop administrators' capacity to deliver high-quality evaluation feedback. This was the key problem we sought to address in our study. We worked with BPS to develop and evaluate a new administrator training program intended to improve the feedback teachers received as part of the formal evaluation process. The 15-hour administrator training program we studied was designed by experienced district-based evaluators, was grounded in adult learning practices, prioritized active learning, provided specific tools and techniques to conduct effective post-observation meetings, and was pilot tested. Moreover, data we analyzed from BPS administrator surveys suggested that they liked the training, thought it was of high quality, and intended to use practices learned during the evaluation process. But, ultimately, it didn't work. The results of our evaluation of the program using a gold-standard randomized field trial show the intensive training had little impact on administrators' feedback skills or teacher performance. We find relatively precise null effects on the frequency and length of post-observation meetings, teachers' perceptions of evaluation feedback quality, and student achievement. While these results are discouraging, they do not mean that we should abandon formal evaluation feedback altogether. Our exploratory analyses revealed that some administrators did consistently provide high-quality feedback, but this was the exception rather than the rule. Instead, we should be more realistic about what is feasible to accomplish within the constraints of formal evaluation systems where administrators walk a tightrope between maintaining rapport with teachers, making high-stakes decisions, and providing substantive feedback. A more productive approach might be to provide feedback to support teacher improvement through other avenues. There is good reason to think that feedback could drive teacher improvement when it is prioritized and largely decoupled from high-stakes evaluation systems. Evidence on teacher coaching programs as well as peer observation and feedback programs suggests that low-stakes forms of feedback can produce meaningful improvements in teacher instruction and student achievement. Frequent feedback is also a core practice of effective urban charter schools and high-performing traditional public schools. Districts could, for example, harness the instructional expertise that exists in each school building through peer feedback systems. They might also employ coaches who are instructional experts with the time and skills necessary to provide frequent actionable feedback to teachers and actively involve them in assessing their own practice. Administrators still would have an important role to play by cultivating school cultures where teachers actively invite others to observe their practice, recognize that everyone has areas for growth, and share a collective commitment to continuous improvement. Both rigorous performance evaluation and frequent formative feedback are important building blocks for promoting a strong teacher workforce. Mounting research suggests that we are watering down both practices by trying to deliver them within a single system. It's time we more narrowly focus the goals of evaluation systems and expand investments in formative observation and feedback. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| How do we solve social media’s eating disorder problem? Posted: 24 Feb 2022 08:53 AM PST By Samantha Lai Eating disorders have been on the rise over the course of the pandemic. In the last two years, the number of adolescents admitted into hospitals for eating disorders has skyrocketed, with medical experts citing increased time on social media as a contributing factor. As internal research leaked by Meta whistleblower Francis Haugen claims, "the tendency to share only the best moments [and] a pressure to look perfect" could leave many with a desire to look or act different. That, coupled with a plethora of online content on dieting and what it means to have the perfect body, have further exacerbated users' insecurities and misled them down dangerous paths. Taken to the extreme, many social media users have also been guided to dangerous pro-eating disorder communities, corners of the internet where users actively encourage and shame each other into unhealthy or even life-threatening weight loss. Lawmakers have become increasingly aware of these dangers. In a hearing last September, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) had his office create a fake Instagram account to understand the prevalence of pro-eating disorder content on the platform. As lawmakers work to hold tech companies to a higher standard in protecting users, this is an important aspect of user safety that cannot be overlooked. Pro-eating disorder communities aren't newPro-eating disorder communities have had a long history on the internet. As early as 2001, Yahoo removed 113 pro-anorexia websites from its servers. After a Huffington Post exposé on "thinspiration" blogs on Tumblr, the platform took action against a cluster of pro-eating disorder blogs. And decades after the problem first surfaced, social media continues to struggle with the same problem. Over the last few years, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and more faced criticism for failing to address pro-eating disorder content and search terms on their platforms. Communities of eating disorder enthusiasts have been found on Twitter, Discord, Snapchat and more. All major social media networks explicitly state in their terms and conditions that users should not promote behaviors of self-harm, including the glorification of eating disorders. Ad policies on Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and other online platforms have either banned or imposed restrictions on weight loss ads. Across most platforms, search terms and hashtags such as "anorexia", "bulimia", and "thinspiration" have been rendered unsearchable. When users look up related terms, they are instead directed to a "need help" page, with resources such as the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) volunteer hotline. Yet social media platforms' eating disorder problem continues to remain unresolved because, at the end of the day, it is only part of a larger, much more complex problem. While the leaked Facebook papers claimed 1 in 3 teenage girls said their body image issues had been made worse by Meta's Instagram platform, other researchers have questioned this conclusion, flagging that "disentangling cause and effect in correlational research that links experience and mental health is an enormous challenge". It is important to also consider how users' life experiences shape their social media experiences, as harmful messages on food and dieting do not exist solely in the vacuum of social media. Diet culture is everywhere in the modern world, rooted in the belief that being thin equates to healthiness and attractiveness, manifesting in "guilt-free recipes" and New Year resolutions to lose weight. In turn, disordered eating habits are often normalized, with a 2008 survey sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reporting that 75% of women report disordered eating behaviors across age groups, racial and ethnic lines. But women are not the only victims of disordered eating, and the condition affects people across genders and sexual identities. Eating disorders are a serious problem, and have the highest morbidity rate of all mental illnesses. But while social media platforms are not solely responsible for causing eating disorders, they are responsible for amplifying them among wider audiences. Increasingly, more young people are using the internet as a tool to find answers, following misguided or even dangerous advice from influencers and peers. Platforms rely upon machine learning algorithms to filter content based on user preferences and seek out new audiences for various information, especially so they could market more ads. For users with preexisting body image issues, seeking out one or two fitness or healthy recipe videos could fill their feeds with similar videos, and those who continue watching similar content could easily be led to content explicitly promoting eating disorders. Such regular exposure has the potential to trigger or worsen disordered eating behaviors for users. For closed-network social media platforms such as Snapchat or Discord, the same functionalities that allow people to connect with those they've never met before have also facilitated the formation of closed group chats, where users share how much they weigh and encourage others to fast. Existing measures are inadequateExisting takedown policies fall short on various counts. As it is with most other content moderation challenges, people and companies posting and promoting such content have outsmarted AI systems with misspelled alternatives to banned search terms and hashtags for users to find each other. Many users also post untagged content, which can slip through existing systems unchecked. Among platforms and other stakeholders, there is also the bigger problem of what should and should not be taken down. When talking about user welfare, it is also important to recognize that users contributing to these platforms, even those that are actively glorifying eating disorders, are also struggling with debilitating mental illnesses, and that taking down accounts could cut them off from much-needed communities of support. What can be done?The good news is that these challenges are not insurmountable, and there are methods for social media companies to improve their responses to content promoting disordered eating. Regarding how algorithms work in the status quo, the problem is that they work too well in catering to user preferences, bombarding users with the content they need to facilitate their self-harm. Recognizing these fallacies following the fallout over the Facebook papers, Meta announced the rollout of a "nudge" function for teens on Instagram, which can be activated when a user spends an extensive amount of time watching workout videos or diet content. In response, the algorithm would instead redirect them to unrelated content such as animal videos or travel pictures. Similar functions could be enabled across other platforms and for all users, as eating disorders could affect a wide range of people other than teenage girls. To encourage algorithmic accountability, researchers should also be granted access to platform data. This would allow those specializing in eating disorders and teen wellbeing to analyze how platform algorithms handle and remove this content. The involvement of third-party standards heightens the pressure on platforms to be accountable for their users' wellbeing. While it is unlikely for platforms to start doing this voluntarily, the EU's Digital Services Act is likely to open up such avenues going forward. A similar framework for the US would be useful in encouraging further research and promoting accountability. Users should also be granted more agency in filtering through content that could be harmful to their wellbeing. A useful example of this would be Twitter's "mute" function, which allows users to avoid seeing tweets on specified keywords. Expanding this across platforms could grant users the tools they need to avoid dangerous content on their own terms. However, a "mute" function will still be inadequate for image- or video-heavy platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, or Pinterest. For such platforms in particular, users should be allowed expanded control over the categories of content they are shown. Facebook's ad preferences page has shown that platforms already collect and categorize users' content preferences. There should be an option for users to eliminate categories of content, going beyond eating disorders and self-harm to gambling content for recovering addicts and pregnancy content for mothers who have miscarried. This could remove even untagged content, as those would often be categorized with other dieting or exercise posts. With existing technologies, categorical removals will likely be imprecise and overly broad. Removing unhealthy food content would mean removing most food content as artificial intelligence software would not be able to make the distinction. Regardless, this could still be useful, in particular for users in recovery whose only other alternatives would be to risk exposure to such content or get off social media completely. In the long run, platforms could also explore alternatives to letting users choose what specific categories of content they would want to reincorporate or avoid completely. Approaches to this would differ based on how platform algorithms prioritize and recommend content. Instead of simply linking to the NEDA webpage, social media companies should take a more proactive and involved approach. Theories on inoculation have shown that people become more resilient to political misinformation when they have been told to prepare for it. Similarly, social media companies could ensure that their users are better primed for harmful narratives surrounding diet culture and eating disorders by preemptively challenging harmful narratives. This could involve working with NEDA and other healthcare experts to create informational graphics, short videos, or easy-to-read Q&A resources. These resources could then be incorporated into social media feeds of high-risk users as standalone posts. Platforms could also create an eating disorder resource center for users, similar to the Voting Information Center on Facebook feeds during the time of the 2020 elections. Instead of simply referring them to a phone number where they could seek further information, platforms could compile useful resources that users could click through to educate themselves. Comprehensive changes in algorithmic design, data control mechanisms and user control can make social media a safer space for all users. But at the end of the day, it is important to recognize that this ties back to a very human problem: a cultural norm of fat-shaming and diet culture, the scientifically unsound idea that skinnier is superior. All this will have to be accompanied by a larger movement for body positivity, in education, media, and beyond, with the understanding that all bodies are good and worthy of love. Alphabet and Meta are general, unrestricted donors to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the author and not influenced by any donation. “Social Media Surveillance” by Khahn Tran is licensed under CC BY 4.0 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Hutchins Roundup: Work hours, natural rate of unemployment, and more Posted: 24 Feb 2022 08:00 AM PST By Sophia Campbell, Lorena Hernandez Barcena, Nasiha Salwati, Louise Sheiner What's the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Individuals report lower desired work hours during the pandemicThe labor market is tighter than suggested by the low unemployment and labor force participation rates, say Jason Faberman of the Chicago Fed and Andreas Mueller and Ayşegül Şahin of the University of Texas at Austin. Comparing the number of hours individuals want to work to those they actually work, they find that desired work hours declined 4.6% among all individuals between February 2020 and the end of 2021, nearly twice the 2.3% decline in labor force participation. These trends are driven primarily by individuals not in the labor force and part-time workers changing the number of hours they are willing to work, rather than broad changes in desire to enter the labor force at all. They are consistent across most demographic groups, with larger declines among those without a college degree. Notably, the authors do not find that desired hours declined significantly more for women than men, despite documented gender disparities in the child-care burdens brought about by COVID-19. The authors also show that workers with jobs involving some degree of social contact saw particularly large reductions in desired work hours—but those with low-contact jobs actually increased their desired hours worked. The natural rate of unemployment increased during the pandemicThe unemployment rate spiked at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic before falling back to pre-pandemic levels. The natural rate of unemployment—the rate that is consistent with full employment and stable inflation—had a longer-lived response, find Richard K. Crump of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and co-authors. The authors estimate that the natural rate of unemployment rose from 4.5% to 5.9% over the 2019-2021 period, with the estimate driven by strong wage growth rather than a rise in inflation expectations or the inflation level. Modeling the Phillips curve relationship— the trade-off between inflation and labor market slack—the authors estimate that the deviation of the actual unemployment rate from its natural rate will push inflation 0.5 percentage point above its long-run trend till the end of 2023, even if long-run inflation expectations remain well-anchored. Recovery of labor force participation could help alleviate wage pressures and bring down inflation, though such changes will likely occur over a long horizon, the authors conclude. Poorer households are more likely to 'buy-high-sell-low'In the U.S., wealth is more unevenly distributed than income, perhaps because the rate of return on assets is higher for wealthier households. Using data on the housing market, Jung Sakong of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank finds that poorer households are more likely to buy a home during an economic boom—when expected returns are lower—and sell after a bust, when expected returns are higher. According to his calculations, a 10% increase in net worth is associated with about a 12 basis point increase in the annual return. Consistent with these patterns, geographic areas with higher housing market volatility have larger differences in wealth inequality relative to income inequality. He concludes that government policies intended to increase wealth by encouraging homeownership could backfire. Chart of the week: Mortgage rates climb
Chart courtesy of The Wall Street Journal Quote of the week:"In my view, conditions in the labor market have been and are currently consistent with the FOMC’s goal of maximum employment, and as such, my focus has been on the persistently high inflation… I support raising the federal funds rate at our next meeting in March and, if the economy evolves as I expect, additional rate increases will be appropriate in the coming months. I will be watching the data closely to judge the appropriate size of an increase at the March meeting. In early March, the FOMC will finally stop expanding the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. The resulting end of our pandemic asset purchases will remove another source of unneeded stimulus for the economy. In the coming months, we need to take the next step, which is to begin reducing the Fed’s balance sheet by ceasing the reinvestment of maturing securities already held in the portfolio. Returning the balance sheet to an appropriate and manageable level will be an important additional step toward addressing high inflation," says Michelle Bowman, Federal Reserve Board Governor. "I expect that these steps will contribute to an easing in inflation pressures in the coming months, but further steps will likely be needed this year to tighten monetary policy. Looking beyond this spring, my views on the appropriate pace of interest rate increases and balance sheet reduction for this year and beyond will depend on how the economy evolves. I will be particularly focused on how much progress we make on bringing down inflation. My intent would be to take forceful action to help reduce inflation, bringing it back toward our 2 percent goal, while keeping the economy on track to continue creating jobs and economic opportunity for Americans."
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
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| President Biden, tear down those walls and let immigrants take jobs in high demand Posted: 24 Feb 2022 07:11 AM PST By Dany Bahar Let's connect some dots. There is an unprecedented shortage of labor in the United States. In some cities, such as Lincoln (NE), Huntsville (AL), and Omaha-Council Bluffs (NE-IA), the number of job openings is three times the number of unemployed workers, according to this measure by Brookings' Workforce of the Future. Among other factors (such as supply chain disruptions or demand outpacing supply in the economy), this labor shortage and the subsequent rise in wages are likely a partial explanation for the rise in inflation. It is important to note that this is a two-way street, of course, because wages also go up in response to inflation, which is the dangerous, vicious inflationary cycle that we better avoid. At the same time, 2021 resulted in the highest recorded numbers of migrants entering or attempting to enter through the southern border to the United States. There is no reason to think this won't continue in 2022. These migrants, mostly from the Northern Triangle countries (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), are desperate to join the U.S. labor force, as they flee poor economic conditions—particularly after the economic slowdown caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic—as well as violence and instability in general. In response to this flow, the Biden-Harris administration has focused on significantly increasing investment toward Central America, including Mexico, while at the same time telling immigrants in Guatemala "do not come." The irony is clear; if there was any time in the modern history of the United States to promote a flexibilization of its migration policies, it is now. It is the most efficient and easiest way to offer a smart solution to the unprecedented tightness in U.S. labor markets. It is a no-brainer for several reasons. First, many of the occupations that are particularly experiencing shortages are occupations where immigrants can start jobs quickly. For instance, part of what exacerbates the supply chain problems is the need for tens of thousands of port workers and truck drivers. Other industries where there are important shortages, such as restaurants and construction, which traditionally have been partly fulfilled by immigrants, could also find new employees if these immigrants are allowed to find legal pathways to live and work in the United States. Second, these workers will not "substitute" American workers, evidenced clearly by the worker shortages. In addition to this, decades of research by economists shows us that immigrants do not worsen labor outcomes of natives. In fact, immigrants are likely complements to American workers, which would come in handy, especially now. Third, there is a big infrastructure package on the way to invest in capital, assuaging traditional, antiquated concerns that the asymmetry of labor demand and supply will hurt wages. Let's unpack that a little bit. The main argument people often use to say that immigrants negatively affect labor outcomes of natives is a theoretical one, using the simplest framework of labor demand and labor supply. If labor supply increases and labor demand stays the same (which is a big assumption because new workers also consume and therefore create demand), you would see a reduction in wages. But that also assumes that the capital stock in the economy will remain the same so that essentially, in theory, a higher flow of immigrants would reduce the capital-per-worker ratio, putting downward pressure on wages. This basically assumes that no capital investment occurs. This thinking is wrong. Investment is happening. Biden's $1.2 trillion dollars infrastructure plan is doing exactly that: investing in capital and raising the levels of capital per worker in the economy. Therefore, as I argued before, this is the right moment to increase the labor supply of the U.S. by providing legal pathways to immigrants as well as providing a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. Immigrants have always been an engine of economic prosperity for the American economy. With all the challenges ahead, this is true now more than ever. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| It is not yet Uhuru for the women of Uganda Posted: 24 Feb 2022 07:00 AM PST By Winnie Kiiza
In line with this movement, Uganda—with an approximate population of 45.74 million, 50.71 percent of whom are female—has, for over the past two decades, shown commitment towards achieving gender equality and women's empowerment. The 1995 Constitution, on which all the country's legislation is based, opposes laws and practices that violate women's dignity. Importantly, its provisions aimed at protecting gender equality are based on international frameworks like The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)—a key international agreement on women's human rights often described as an international bill of rights for women—and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol). CEDAW and the Maputo Protocol signal a successful mainstreaming of women's rights as human rights and impose the main obligation on member states to implement the frameworks.
Despite the positive steps that have been taken in Uganda to promote gender equality and women's empowerment, the position for women in Ugandan society is one of powerlessness influenced by a range of factors. These factors include cultural biases that unjustly stall women's career progression in public spaces, lack of qualifications and skills (given the already-marginalized position of women in education and training), and low self-confidence. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the government's inability to address women's rights in the "private" sphere (e.g., homes). Women and girls confined in their homes during COVID-19 lockdowns experienced increases in domestic violence, and about 90,000 girls under the age of 18 were reported pregnant in Uganda. Yet, private spheres are often thought to be beyond the purview of the State—exempt from governmental scrutiny and intervention. As a result, violence against women and girls that occur within families continue to remain hidden, where perpetrators of such human rights abuses typically enjoy impunity for their actions.
These biases and gaps impact women's ability to actively participate in public spaces and generate income and contribute to the economic growth as agents of development. It is not only women that feel the negative effects of failure to invest in women, their children's welfare and efforts to combat poverty and achieve economic growth are similarly affected. Therefore, the government—in an effort to make our communities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable—should adequately invest in efforts to address these limitations and consider the following recommendations:
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