Closing gaps for good: Ensuring equitable recovery in a post-pandemic world
Tuesday 18 May 2021, 5.00pm to 6.00pm BST
This event has now ended. We had over 3,200 people register and over 100 questions submitted. If you were unable to join us, or would like to revisit the webinar, you can view it on our Dear World, Yours Cambridge YouTube channel, here or above.
The discussion — Closing gaps for good: Ensuring equitable recovery in a post-pandemic world
From home schooling to domestic violence to education and child marriage, the pandemic has disproportionately affected women, increasing a gender gap already far too wide.
As we begin to emerge from the crisis, we must create an inclusive society that capitalises on the full potential of all its citizens, to eliminate inequality and poverty. The poverty cycle is inextricably linked with women’s education and career opportunities. Closing the gender gap will narrow the poverty divide and increase opportunities for more than 50 per cent of the world’s population. It could double the number of minds examining and solving challenges at micro and macro levels.
It is time to turn our world around. How can we work together to remove the structural barriers and traditions that mean women, while bearing the bulk of work in the home, struggle to make their way through education and to achieve beyond it?
Join Stephen J Toope, Dr Anita Zaidi and three remarkable Gates Cambridge Scholars for an inspirational discussion about advancing the rights of women and multiplying human resources for good, across the globe.
Speakers
Professor Stephen J Toope (Trinity 1983)
Professor Stephen J Toope OC, LL.D. is the 346th Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, the first non-UK national to hold the post. He was Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, and President, the University of British Columbia. A former Dean of Law, McGill University, Toope was also Chair of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances.
Professor Toope publishes in global journals on human rights, international dispute resolution, international environmental law, the use of force, and international legal theory, and has lectured at universities around the world. His current book project with Professor Jutta Brunnée explores mechanisms and processes fostering stability and change in international law.
Dr Anita Zaidi
Anita Zaidi is the president of the foundation’s Gender Equality Division. In this role, Anita oversees the foundation’s efforts to achieve gender equality by integrating gender across the foundation’s global work and investing in women’s economic empowerment, women’s leadership, and removing the barriers for women and girls to thrive. The mission of the Gender Equality Division is a world in which women and girls have equal opportunity.
Anita also serves as the foundation’s director of the Vaccine Development, Surveillance, and Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases programs. Since joining the foundation in 2014, she has led a team focused on vaccine development for people in the poorest parts of the world, surveillance to identify and address causes of death in children in the most under-served areas, and significantly reducing the adverse consequences of diarrheal and enteric infections on children’s health in low and middle-income countries. Through this role, Anita champions innovative work on behalf of low-income women and children, including the creation of the Women Leaders in Global Health program—now called WomenLift Health—to promote diversity in global health leadership. She also works closely with the foundation’s Maternal Newborn Child Health Discovery & Tools program.
Previously, Anita was the department chair of Pediatrics and Child Health at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, where she worked to reduce child mortality through the prevention and treatment of illness. She obtained her medical degree specializing in pediatric infectious diseases at Aga Khan University, and completed further trainings at Duke University, Boston’s Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health. To date, Anita has published more than 200 research papers on vaccine-preventable diseases and newborn infections in resource-limited settings.
In 2013, Anita became the first recipient of the $1 million Caplow Children’s Prize for her pioneering work bringing health services and wraparound care to mothers and children in poverty-stricken communities in Karachi. She was also nominated as a notable physician of the year in 2014 by Medscape.
Dr Tara Cookson (Wolfson 2011)
Tara Patricia Cookson is an Assistant Professor of Gender, Development and Global Public Policy at the University of British Columbia's School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and the cofounder of Ladysmith, a feminist research consultancy that helps international organisations collect, analyse and take action on gender data. In her role at Ladysmith she has led evidence-driven projects for UN Women, UNICEF, the International Labour Organization, Global Affairs Canada, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and Facebook, among others.
She is currently serving as a technical advisor to UN Women's global offices on gender-responsive social protection systems for an equitable COVID-19 recovery. She is also author of the award winning book Unjust Conditions: Women's Work and the Hidden Cost of Cash Transfer Programs, based on the research she conducted while a Gates Cambridge Scholar and member of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge (2011-2015).
Shadrack Frimpong (Jesus 2020)
Shadrack Frimpong is a current PhD student, studying public health and primary care. He is also a non-profit leader and global health scholar whose work is inspired by his background. A son of a peasant and a charcoal seller, he grew up without running water and electricity in rural Ghana. Yet he became the first person from his village to attend college in the US, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with the $150,000 President’s Engagement Prize, one of Penn’s highest honours, with which he founded Cocoa360, a community engagement model.
Shadrack has received many awards including the prestigious Huntington Public Service Award, Forbes 30 under 30, the Clinton Foundation’s CGIU Honor Roll, HRM Queen Elizabeth II’s Young Leader Award, and the Muhammad Ali Award.
Shadrack holds master's degrees from Penn (MS, NonProfit Leadership) and Yale (Advanced MPH, Global Health). He graduated from each degree with the top prize. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Beyond his peer-reviewed publications, he has also provided expertise on community engagement in public health and medicine by working with UNICEF and WHO to co-author evidence-based frameworks on global health issues.
Dr Sharmila Parmanand (Homerton 2016)
Sharmila Parmanand is a Fellow in Gender and Human Rights at the London School of Economics and oversees research projects on women and migration for the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women. Her research focus is gender and international development and women's precarious labour — and on hearing and responding to their stories to transform perception and change lives.
Having lived in the Philippines, Sharmila is interested in how state policies and other interventions targeted at poor women interact with their lived realities. For her master’s thesis at the University of Melbourne, she conducted interviews with female microcredit borrowers to examine the traditional assumption that access to credit empowers women, especially mothers.
After working in the anti-human trafficking sector for over two years, Sharmila assessed anti-trafficking discourses and policies in the Philippines. During her PhD in Gender Studies in Cambridge, she examined the anti-trafficking ecosystem, in particular the policy-making process, the knowledge claims made about victims and women in vulnerable employment situations, and how these claims are negotiated and produced.
Through her work, Sharmila hopes to give primacy to the experiences of individuals directly affected by these interventions, explore any possible unintended consequences, and contribute to the ongoing conversation about how best to uphold their agency and human rights. She has served as a debate trainer in on-site events for university and high school students in over 45 countries.
Booking information
We welcome your questions in advance for Professor Stephen J Toope, Dr Anita Zaidi and our three remarkable Gates scholars, Dr Tara Cookson, Shadrack Frimpong and Dr Sharmila Parmanand. Please reserve your place now to get your questions in early for this unique online event.
Booking for this event is now closed.
