King's College London

King’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership (GIWL) – now part of King's Business School – this week hosted its annual event to mark International Women’s Day, with GIWL chair and former Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard being joined in conversation by Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities Bridget Phillipson. 

In a wide-ranging conversation, Phillipson reflected on her journey from a working-class upbringing in Sunderland and running a domestic abuse refuge, to becoming a Cabinet Minister in the first Labour government for 14 years.

 

The pair reflected on the state of gender equality today and discussed critical issues including tackling misogyny and violence against women and girls, as well as emerging divisions between young men and women on gender roles and women's rights.

Noting these emerging divisions, Bridget Phillipson emphasised the importance of teaching young people about healthy relationships and consent, highlighting the need to be aware of and offer alternatives to the harmful influences they often encounter online.

 

Vice-Chancellor & President of King's College London Professor Shitij Kapur opened the event, highlighting the university's commitment to advancing gender equality, noting that, for the first time in King's history, more women were promoted to the rank of professor than men last year.

Meanwhile, Professor Stephen Bach, Executive Dean of King's Business School, emphasised the importance of workplace diversity and expressed optimism about the future, particularly now women make up 55% of the Business School's students.

Closing the event was Professor Heejung Chung, the new Director of the King's Global Institute for Women's Leadership, who outlined her vision for the Institute’s future and highlighted upcoming initiatives focused on advancing gender equality in workplaces and communities.

The event, hosted in partnership with Ipsos, also featured insights from Kelly Beaver MBE, Chief Executive of Ipsos UK and Ireland, who presented findings from a new global study of attitudes towards gender equality, carried out jointly by Ipsos and GIWL.

The research revealed men and women belonging to Gen Z are more divided than those of any other generation on key questions about feminism, gender roles and women’s rights:

• 53% of Gen Z women across the 30 countries included in the study define themselves as feminists, compared with just 32% of Gen Z men – a gap of 21 percentage points and the biggest gender split of any generation surveyed.
• 28% of Gen Z men think staying home to care for children makes a man "less of a man" versus 19% of Gen Z women.
• 60% of Gen Z men agree men are being expected to do too much to support equality, 22 points higher than 38% Gen Z women who feel the same.

Meanwhile, 76% of people in South Korea say there is tension between men and women in the country – the highest of 30 countries surveyed on this question.

Great Britain (40%), by contrast, fares much better, ranking 26th out of the 30 nations for perceptions of tension between men and women – and far ahead of the likes of Australia (51%) and the US (58%), where more than half the population say tension exists between men and women.

And despite some negative trends in attitudes, the research also found a majority of people across all countries surveyed agree gender equality is personally important to them.