The Women's Leadership Board is continuing its support of critical applied research addressing global gender issues. Most prominent among these current projects is "Closing the Gender Gap - A Call to Action" being led by Professor Iris Bohnet of the Women and Public Policy Program and Professor Ricardo Hausman of the Center for International Development. It is a multi-year, multi-faceted initiative to mobilize research, policy development and aggressive outreach to increase gender equity across the globe. The initiative was derived from the Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum that measures four critical dimensions of life: educational attainment, health and security, political participation and economic opportunity. The project is meant to go beyond the "measuring" of inequality to the development of policy solutions and strategies which will end that inequality. It will have several components including research into the context and genesis of initiatives which have allowed nations and individual institutions (including corporations) to successfully decrease the gender gap, analysis and evaluation of the efficacy of specific interventions to close the gaps, regional dialogues to align policy prescriptions with cultural and ethnic factors, and widespread dissemination of the findings and "policy/strategy tool box" for enacting change.
The Women's Leadership Board has been a critical partner since the early phases of the development of the World Economic Forum Index. The Board will play both a supporting and a participatory role in the current initiative. After the faculty completes the research phase of the project, the Board members will be asked to utilize their existing and newly formed networks to disseminate the findings and the proposed solutions to the largest and most diverse audience. This may include sponsoring corporate gatherings, making presentations of the findings to local organizations and ensuring that research results are highlighted in the media. Board members will also channel reactions and questions back to the academics for further refinement and adjustment.