Five research papers impacting women and policy right now

Insights > Social Justice > Five research papers impacting women and policy right now

Illustration of a group of diverse women

By Leah Kinthaert

In the 1970s, women’s studies (now typically called gender studies), was born as an academic field. Inherently multidisciplinary, it draws from various academic fields to examine the social and cultural construction of gender and the experiences of women.

Taylor & Francis imprints Routledge and (before 2005) Carfax were some of the original movers and shakers in gender studies, helping to bring together communities through their books and journals program.

Women's Studies, published by Taylor & Francis, was in fact the first ever journal devoted to scholarship and criticism of women in the fields of literature, history, art, sociology, law, political science, economics, anthropology, and the sciences.

This month we took a deep dive into Altmetric, a tool which monitors the reach of research through online interactions, and found that between 2020 and 2025, there were 611 mentions in 445 policy documents of multidisciplinary Taylor & Francis research on the topic of "gender studies."

What follows are five Taylor & Francis articles published in the past five years categorized as "gender studies," that have directly influenced recent policy documents from some of the largest and most influential organizations in the world.

From the World Bank to the Publications Office of the European Union, these policy documents, armed with peer-reviewed research, exert influence by shaping laws, guiding decision-making, and driving positive outcomes in the real world.

A group of 3 young women of different races and ethnicities

Platforms not a panacea: protecting laborers with decent working conditions is key

In the open access article "Platforms of inequality: gender dynamics of digital labour in Africa" from the journal Gender & Development, Mohammed Amir Anwar explains that the rise of a global "platform economy" (work digitally mediated via platforms) has been "framed as a panacea to poverty," creating paid work "for marginalized groups in Africa, particularly women."

Yet unfortunately, according to Anwar's research, this work is laden with gender-based inequalities, often creating "financial insecurity" and outcomes that bring "adverse physical and psychological impacts."

Anwar asks policymakers not to see the platform economy as a "silver bullet," but instead recommends that they "develop concrete plans to improve the provision of education and digital skills among the marginalised sections of the population such as women."

He continues with his suggestions: "removal of such entry barriers should be complemented with strong regulatory mechanisms designed to protect labour rights on the continent."

These research findings were cited in The World Bank Group's report, "The Gendered Impact of Digital Jobs Platforms: Experimental Evidence from Mozambique." This report "examines the impact of digital labor-market platforms on job outcomes."

In addition, Anwar's article was cited in the report "Human Development 2025" from the United Nations Development Programme, which can be read here.

People waiting for a bus in Maputo, Mozambique.

Making the invisible visible: voices of the "sandwich generation" in the Philippines

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report "Promoting Active Ageing in Southeast Asia" states: "Key active ageing policies in the ten ASEAN countries should focus on: tackling labour market informality; reducing gender inequalities in old age and improving care provision; providing inclusive access to health care; enhancing social protection in old age; and, promoting the social participation of older people."

As part of reducing gender inequalities, the OECD authors recommend that policies "include a gender perspective" in their design to "mitigate compounding inequalities."

This report cites the paper "In search of Filipino 'women in the middle'" from the Asian Journal of Women's Studies as a source. The author of the paper, Excelsa Tongson, discusses how to begin to frame the experiences of millions of Filipinos – a group she refers to as "the sandwich generation" – with a gendered lens.

Tongson explains: "The 'sandwich generation' is a unique familial position and refers to persons who are expected to care simultaneously for children and older adults in extended families. The non-availability of information about women of this cohort in leading government sources of data and their invisibility in the care work discourse led me to investigate their condition."

Tongson cites the The Philippine Commission on Women to paint a picture of these women's lives: "even as they perform a broad range of activities in the home and even as they work outside the home; in both instances, women are perceived as being merely supportive, and therefore, secondary or even marginal."

Tongson continues: "The persistent complications of attending to myriad tasks, both productive and reproductive, are placing women of the sandwich generation at risk of being neglected, abused or exploited. Women’s unpaid care has become a barrier for them to participate in the labor market, political and community affairs and to attend to their personal needs and interests."

Tongson's research points out a gap in what has been long used as a standard for data collection: "Despite the multiple burdens they carry every day, their unpaid care work is not included in the System of National Accounts." The System of National Accounts is "the internationally agreed standard set of recommendations on how to compile measures of economic activity."

More than ever before, research such as Tongson's that can shed a light on the situation of aging populations around the world is key. The National Institute on Aging has sounded the alarm on what could well become a global crisis, without proper preparation, planning, and policies in place: "The number of older Asians will nearly triple over the next four decades. The older population will increase much faster than the working-age population who contribute to old-age social security systems and/or provide care for people in this age group."

Women working at a cigar factory in Manila, Philippines

Working toward safe and accessible transport for all

Described as a "hidden crisis," "transport poverty" – where individuals lack access to reliable transportation, hindering their ability to fully function – impacts millions of people throughout the world.

Even in the United States, considered the wealthiest country in the world by nominal GDP, one study found that 1 in 5 people in the United States experience "transportation insecurity."

The Publications Office of the European Union has addressed the issue in their paper "Transport poverty: A systematic literature review in Europe," where they explain that understanding the root causes of this very complex problem is key to solving it.

The report lists some of the causes of 'transport poverty': "there is no ... one size fits all solution. Apart from poverty and low educational attainment, other causes can include poor land-use planning and lack of mixed land use (lack of essential services locally), spatial mismatch, dwelling affordability, gentrification, accessibility barriers, urban fragmentation, transport costs, digital illiteracy, and poor transport infrastructure provision, service and maintenance, especially in remote and rural locations, leading in many cases to transport or transit deserts."

The report stresses the importance of taking an "intersectional view" of the issue, including, for example, the specific needs of children, older people, people with disabilities, LGBTQIA+, unemployed, single parents, people of color, and others.

One of the paper's references includes the article "Queer mobilities: critical LGBTQ perspectives of public transport spaces" from the journal Mobilities. This paper sets forth the argument that gender needs to be part of any policy discussion when planning and operating public transport, explaining that: "Investing in the inclusion of LGBTQ people implies comprehensive interaction and representation to plan accessible and safe mobility opportunities for all – as most people use and socialise in spaces they feel welcome and safe in."

This open access research paper was also cited in the OECD report "Improving the Quality of Walking and Cycling in Cities," which you can read here.

People on a bus in Belgrade, Serbia.

Acknowledging the role of women in small-scale fishing

In its report "Governing for transformation for sustainable small scale fisheries," the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) aims to bring an "interdisciplinary, social science-oriented" approach to "thinking about small-scale fisheries," in order to "empower fishers and fishworkers towards a more inclusive, equitable, sustainable and resilient subsector."

The report acknowledges a sea change since the early twentieth century, when "narrowly focused approaches (were) designed mainly for large-stock northern hemisphere fisheries."

The FAO's reporting "reflects the recognition of the need to consider the ecosystem (including humans) as a whole." The authors explain: "It is truly significant because in the historical development of resource economics, natural resources were considered 'free gifts of nature', disconnected from their roles in the ecosystem, local economies and livelihoods. The subsequent global commodification of natural resources has been connected to this historical view."

That "global commodification" has led to overfishing. The World Wildlife Foundation says that "4 million fishing vessels of all sizes now ply the oceans, many with increasing capacity and efficiencies to catch more fish. As pressure from fishing grows, the likelihood of damage to the structure and function of the ocean ecosystem increases."

Overfishing also negatively impacts millions of people, many in low- and middle-income countries, who rely on fishing for their livelihood. Effects have already been seen in mass migrations.

The open access article "Food sovereignty, gender and everyday practice: the role of Afro-Colombian women in sustaining localised food systems" from the Journal of Peasant Studies examines a largely overlooked experience – that of individual women's work to provision food in their communities. The authors, led by Katherine L. Turner of the School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada, explain that women "often undertake distinct, significant work that is frequently normalised within households and dismissed by society as secondary to, or less important than, higher profile, market-oriented activities."

The authors continue: "We contend that special attention to women’s everyday practice adds valuable insights into how localised food systems are sustained and reproduced." These localized systems "run counter to wider trends of greater integration into a globalised food system as well as various Colombian government policies that foster the industrialisation of food production."

The authors recommend that food industrialization is not necessarily the best option. "Food provisioning in these regions, particularly that carried out by women, is essential to nourishing households and communities as it provides sustenance, maintains socio-cultural and ecological relationships and enables greater self-sufficiency within market economy integration processes."

Those insights on how localized food systems are sustained and produced are necessary in order to help address the crisis of hunger. Globally, the UN says that, in data from 2022 "735 million people found themselves in a state of chronic hunger" and "an estimated 2.4 billion people faced moderate to severe food insecurity."

Respecting communities to manage their own resources in traditional ways, and understanding the role of women in those communities, is key to policymaking. The authors explain: "While predominantly male provisioning activities such as agriculture and commercial fishing tend to receive more recognition and support from state and non-state actors, women in Sivirú play vital roles in sustaining localised food systems and the local economy through their food production and harvesting activities and their work of planning and preparing meals."

"Many Sivirú women find within these activities spaces for the exercise of creative agency, pleasure, authority and influence. These individual and collective everyday practices are integral to maintaining and strengthening the complex traditional ecological knowledge, biodiversity, social relationships and cultural practices that make the Sivirú food systems distinctive and capable of sustaining families, communities and lifeways."

"Many of the features discussed here also resonate strongly with other Pacific Coastal Afro-Colombian food systems, thus reinforcing the importance of better recognising and supporting these everyday provisioning practices."

Mangroves in Colombia

The risk-laden world of migrant domestic workers

Researchers not only impact policy, but they also serve to analyze how enacted policies either benefit or harm the communities for which they're designed.

A policy set in 2014 by the Government of Myanmar banned women from migrating for domestic work. This was in response to a number of high-profile cases of abuse of foreign domestic workers.

In their open access article "Geographies of Transnational Domesticity: Migration Risks, Intersectional Disadvantage, and Mitigation Strategies by Foreign Domestic Workers from Myanmar" from The Professional Geographer, authors Elaine Lynn Ee-Ho and Wen-Ching Ting explain how this ban caused even more issues for Myanmar's migrant domestic workers, who now face imprisonment on top of existing problems such as abuse and exploitation.

To shed light on the plight of female migrant workers, Ee-Ho and Ting conducted field interviews with Myanmarese domestic workers in Singapore along with licensed employment agents, trainers, nongovernmental organization (NGO) workers, and informal brokers.

The authors detail the situations that many migrant workers find themselves in: "At the household level, domestic workers work long hours and are confined to their employers’ homes, sometimes without days off (depending on private arrangements with the employer). Both their labor and potentially exploitative working conditions thus become 'hidden' from public eyes."

They continue: "Isolation in the employer’s home, with limited access to communication devices, exposes domestic workers to risks such as overwork, privacy invasion, physical or verbal abuse, and even rape. They could be subject to unfair treatment such as passport retentions; being assigned work outside of their contracts; delay or retention of their wages; and safety risks, such as falling from high-rise flats when they clean exterior windows or hang laundry."

Ee-Ho and Ting's research was cited in the 2024 World Migration Report from UN IOM (International Organization for Migration), specifically in Chapter 6 entitled "Gender and Migration: Trends, Gaps and Urgent Action."

The report comes to the conclusion that: "Taking a migrant’s perspective ... enables a better understanding of gendered experiences throughout the migration cycle, which are shaped by diverse opportunities and obstacles related to prevailing gender norms."

You can read the 2024 World Migration Report here.

Migrant domestic workers from Myanmar enjoy a day off in Singapore.

Open access research in particular is impacting policy

We know that statistically, OA articles published with Taylor & Francis typically receive 40% more citations than non-OA articles.

Of the policy documents on the topic of gender studies that we researched for this blog post, we found that 238 of the 445 policy documents citing Taylor & Francis research utilized open access papers.

Our Author Services website provides some concrete steps that researchers can take to make sure their research creates impact, such as "investing time to find out who is making the policy decisions relevant to your research" and understanding the bigger picture of a global or local "problem that your research is looking at."

Stylized collage of people with multiple skin tones on either side of the earth.

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