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What’s in an Equity Research Report?

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Even though you can easily find real equity research reports via the magical tool known as “Google,” we’ve continued to get questions on this topic.

Whenever I see the same question over and over again, you know what I do: I bash my head in repeatedly and contemplate jumping off a building…

…and then I write an article to answer the question.

To understand an equity research report, you must understand what goes into a  stock pitch first.

The idea is similar, but an ER report is a “watered-down” version of a stock pitch.

But banks have some very solid reasons for publishing equity research reports:

Why Do Equity Research Reports Matter?

You might remember from previous articles that equity research teams do not spend that much time writing these reports .

Most of their time is spent speaking with management teams and institutional investors and sharing their views on sectors and companies.

However, equity research reports are still important because:

• You do still spend some time doing the required modeling work (~15%) and writing the reports (~20%).
• You might have to write a research report as part of the interview process.

For example, if you apply to an equity research role or an equity research internship , especially in an off-cycle process, you might be asked to draft a short report on a company.

And then in roles outside of ER, you need to know how to interpret reports quickly and extract the key information.

Equity Research Reports: Myth vs. Reality

If you want to understand equity research reports, you have to understand first why banks publish them: to earn higher commissions from trading activity.

A bank wants to encourage institutional investors to buy more shares of the companies it covers.

Doing so generates more trading volume and higher commissions for the bank.

This is why you rarely, if ever, see “Sell” ratings, and why “Hold” ratings are far less common than “Buy” ratings.

Different Types of Equity Research Reports

One last point before getting into the tutorial: There are many different types of research reports.

“Initiating Coverage” reports tend to be long – 50-100 pages or more – and have tons of industry research and data.

“Sector Reports” on entire industries are also very long. And there are other types, which you can read about here .

In this tutorial, we’re focusing on the “Company Update” or “Company Note”-type reports, which are the most common ones.

The Full Tutorial, Video, and Sample Equity Research Reports

For our full walk-through of equity research reports, please see the video below:

Table of Contents:

• 1:43: Part 1: Stock Pitches vs. Equity Research Reports
• 6:00: Part 2: The 4 Main Differences in Research Reports
• 12:46: Part 3: Sample Reports and the Typical Sections
• 20:53: Recap and Summary

You can get the reports and documents referenced in the video here:

• Equity Research Report – Jazz Pharmaceuticals [JAZZ] – OUTPERFORM [BUY] Recommendation [PDF]
• Equity Research Report – Shawbrook [SHAW] – NEUTRAL [HOLD] Recommendation [PDF]
• Equity Research Reports vs. Stock Pitches – Slides [PDF]

If you want the text version instead, keep reading:

Watered-Down Stock Pitches

You should think of equity research reports as “watered-down stock pitches.”

If you’ve forgotten, a hedge fund or asset management stock pitch ( sample stock pitch here ) has the following components:

• Part 1: Recommendation
• Part 2: Company Background
• Part 3: Investment Thesis
• Part 4: Catalysts
• Part 5: Valuation
• Part 6: Investment Risks and How to Mitigate Them
• Part 7: The Worst-Case Scenario and How to Avoid It

In a stock pitch, you’ll spend most of your time and energy on the Catalysts, Valuation, and Investment Risks because you want to express a VERY different view of the company .

For example, the company’s stock price is $100, but you believe it’s worth only $50 because it’s about to report earnings 80% lower than expectations.

Therefore, you recommend shorting the stock. You also recommend purchasing call options at an exercise price of $125 to limit your losses to 25% if the stock moves in the opposite direction.

In an equity research report, you’ll still express a view of the company that’s different from the consensus, but your view won’t be dramatically different.

You’ll spend more time on the Company Background and Valuation sections, and far less time and space on the Catalysts and Risk Factors. And you won’t even write a Worst-Case Scenario section.

If a company seems overvalued by 50%, a research analyst would probably write a “Hold” recommendation, say that there’s “uncertainty around several customers,” and claim that the company’s current market value is appropriate.

Oh, and by the way, one risk factor is that the company might report lower-than-expected earnings.

The Four Main Differences in Equity Research Reports

The main differences are as follows:

1) There’s More Emphasis on Recent Results and Announcements

For example, how does a recent product announcement, clinical trial result, or earnings report impact the company?

You’ll almost always see recent news and updates on the first page of a research report:

These factors may play a role in hedge fund stock pitches as well, but more so in short recommendations since timing is more important there.

2) Far-Outside-the-Mainstream Views Are Less Common

One comical example of this trend is how all 15 equity research analysts covering Enron rated it a “buy” right before it collapsed :

Sell-side analysts are far less likely to point out that the emperor has no clothes than buy-side analysts.

3) Research Reports Give “Target Prices” Rather Than Target Price Ranges

For example, the company is trading at $50.00 right now, but we expect its price to increase to exactly $75.00 in the next twelve months.

This idea is completely ridiculous because valuation is always about the range of possible outcomes, not a specific outcome.

Despite horrendously low accuracy , this practice continues.

To be fair, many analysts do give target prices in different cases, which is an improvement:

4) The Investment Thesis, Catalysts, and Risk Factors Are “Looser”

These sections tend to be “afterthoughts” in most reports.

For example, the bank might give a few reasons why it expects the company’s share price to rise: the company will capture more market share than expected, it will be able to increase its product prices more rapidly than expected, and a competitor is about to go bankrupt.

However, the sell-side analyst will not tie these factors to specific share-price impacts as a buy-side analyst would.

Similarly, the report might mention catalysts and investment risks, but there won’t be a link to a specific valuation impact from each factor.

So the typical stock pitch logic (“We think there’s a 50% chance of gaining 80% and a 50% chance of losing 20%”) won’t be spelled out explicitly:

Your Sample Equity Research Reports

To illustrate these concepts, I’m sharing two equity research reports from our financial modeling courses :

The first one is from the valuation case study in our Advanced Financial Modeling course , and the second one is from the main case study in our Bank Modeling course .

These are comprehensive examples, backed by industry data and outside research, but if you want a shorter/simpler example you can recreate in a few hours, the Core Financial Modeling course has just that.

In each case, we started by creating traditional HF/AM stock pitches and valuations and then made our views weaker in the research reports.

The Typical Sections of an Equity Research Report

So let’s briefly go through the main sections of these reports, using the two examples above:

Page 1: Update, Rating, Price Target, and Recent Results

The first page of an “Update” report states the bank’s recommendation (Buy, Hold, or Sell, sometimes with slightly different terminology), and gives recent updates on the company.

For example, in both these reports we reference recent earnings results from the companies and expectations for the next fiscal year:

We also give a “target price,” explain where it comes from, and give our estimates for the company’s key financial metrics.

We mention catalysts in both reports, but we don’t link anything to a specific valuation impact.

One problem with providing a specific “target price” is that it must be based on specific multiples and specific assumptions in a DCF or DDM.

So with Jazz, we explain that the $170.00 target is based on 20.7x and 15.3x EV/EBITDA multiples for the comps, and a discount rate of 8.07% and Terminal FCF growth rate of 0.3% in the DCF.

Next: Operations and Financial Summary

Next, you’ll see a section with lots of graphs and charts detailing the company’s financial performance, market share, and important metrics and ratios.

For a pharmaceutical company like Jazz, you might see revenue by product, pricing and # of patients per product per year, and EBITDA margins.

For a commercial bank like Shawbrook, you might see loan growth, interest rates, interest income and net income, and regulatory capital figures such as the Common Equity Tier 1 (CET 1) and Tangible Common Equity (TCE) ratios:

This section of the report explains how the analyst or equity research associate forecast the company’s performance and came up with the numbers used in the valuation.

The valuation section is the one that’s most similar in a research report and a stock pitch.

In both fields, you explain how you arrived at the company’s implied value, which usually involves pasting in a DCF or DDM analysis and comparable companies and transactions.

The methodologies are the same, but the assumptions might differ substantially.

In research, you’re also more likely to point to specific multiples, such as the 75 th percentile EV/EBITDA multiple, and explain why they are the most meaningful ones.

For example, you might argue that since the company’s growth rates and margins exceed the medians of the set, it deserves to be valued at the 75 th percentile multiples rather than the median multiples:

Investment Thesis, Catalysts, and Risks

This section is short, and it is more of an afterthought than anything else.

We do give reasons for why these companies might be mis-priced, but the reasoning isn’t that detailed.

For example, in the Shawbrook report we state that the U.K. mortgage market might slow down and that regulatory changes might reduce the market size and the company’s market share:

Those are legitimate catalysts, but the report doesn’t explain their share-price impact in the same way that a stock pitch would.

Finally, banks present Investment Risks mostly so they can say, “Well, we warned you there were risks and that our recommendation might be wrong.”

By contrast, buy-side analysts present Investment Risks so they can say, “There is a legitimate chance we could lose 50% – let’s hedge against that risk with options or other investments so that our fund does not collapse .”

How These Reports Both Differ from the Corresponding Stock Pitches

The Jazz equity research report corresponds to a “Long” pitch that’s much stronger:

• We estimate its intrinsic value as $180 – $220 / share , up from $170 in the report.
• We estimate the per-share impact of each catalyst: price increases add 15% to the share price, more patients from marketing efforts add 10%, and later-than-expected generics competition adds 15%.
• We also estimate the per-share impact from the risk factors and conclude that in the worst case , the company’s share price might decline from $130 to $75-$80. But in all likelihood, even if we’re wrong, the company is simply valued appropriately at $130.
• And then we explain how to hedge against these risks with put options.

The same differences apply to the Shawbrook research report vs. the stock pitch, but the stock pitch there is a “Short” recommendation where we claim that the company is overvalued by 30-50%.

And that sums up the differences perfectly: A Short recommendation with 30-50% downside in a stock pitch turns into a “Hold” recommendation with roughly equal upside and downside in a sell-side research report.

I’ve been harsh on equity research here, but I don’t want to disparage it too much.

There are many positives: You do get more creativity than in IB, it might be better for hedge fund or asset management exits, and it’s more fun to follow companies than to grind through grunt work on deals.

But no matter how you slice it, most equity research reports are watered-down stock pitches.

So, make sure you understand the “strong stuff” first before you downgrade – even if your long-term goal is equity research.

You might be interested in:

• The Equity Research Analyst Career Path: The Best Escape from a Ph.D. Program, or a Pathway into the Abyss?
• Private Equity Regulation : 2023 Changes and Impact on Finance Careers
• Stock Pitch Guide: How to Pitch a Stock in Interviews and Win Offers

About the Author

Brian DeChesare is the Founder of Mergers & Inquisitions and Breaking Into Wall Street . In his spare time, he enjoys lifting weights, running, traveling, obsessively watching TV shows, and defeating Sauron.

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Read below or Add a comment

15 thoughts on “ What’s in an Equity Research Report? ”

Hi Brian, what softwares are available to publish Research Reports?

We use Word templates. Some large banks have specialized/custom programs, but not sure how common they are.

Is it possible if you can send me a template in word of an equity report? It will help the graduate stock management fund a lot at Umass Boston.

We only have PDF versions for these, but Word should be able to open any PDF reasonably well.

Do you also provide a pre constructed version of an ER in word?

We have editable examples of equity research reports in Word, but we generally only share PDF versions on this site.

Hey Brian Can you please help me with coverage initiated reports on oil companies. I could not find them on the net. I need to them to get equity research experience, after which only I will be able to get into the field. I searched but reports could not be found even for a price. Thanks

We have an example of an oil & gas stock pitch on this site… do a search…

https://mergersandinquisitions.com/oil-gas-stock-pitch/

Beyond that, sorry, we cannot look for reports and then share them with you or we’d be inundated with requests to do that every day.

No worries. Thanks!

Hi! Brian! Do u know how investment bankers design and layout an equity research? the software they use. like MS Word, Adobe Indesign or something…? And how to create and layout one? Thanks

where can I get free equity research report? I am a Chinese student and now study in Australia. Is the Morning Star a good resource for research report?

Get a TD Ameritrade to access free reports there for certain companies.

How do you view the ER industry since the trading commission has been down 50% since 2007. And there are new in coming regulation governing the ER reports have to explicitly priced and funds need to pay for the report explicity rather than as a service comes free with brokerage?

In addition the whole S&T environment is becoming highly automated.

People have been predicting the death of equity research for over a decade, but it’s still here. It may not be around in 100 years, but it will still be around in another 10 years, though it will be smaller and less relevant.

Yes, things are becoming more automated, but the actual job of an equity research analyst or associate hasn’t changed dramatically. A machine can’t speak with investors to assess their sentiment on a company – only humans can do that.

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Contributed equally to this work with: Paola Belingheri, Filippo Chiarello, Andrea Fronzetti Colladon, Paola Rovelli

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Largo L. Lazzarino, Pisa, Italy

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy, Department of Management, Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Faculty of Economics and Management, Centre for Family Business Management, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

• Paola Belingheri, 
• Filippo Chiarello, 
• Andrea Fronzetti Colladon, 
• Paola Rovelli

• Published: September 21, 2021
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474
• Reader Comments

9 Nov 2021: The PLOS ONE Staff (2021) Correction: Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator. PLOS ONE 16(11): e0259930. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259930 View correction

Gender equality is a major problem that places women at a disadvantage thereby stymieing economic growth and societal advancement. In the last two decades, extensive research has been conducted on gender related issues, studying both their antecedents and consequences. However, existing literature reviews fail to provide a comprehensive and clear picture of what has been studied so far, which could guide scholars in their future research. Our paper offers a scoping review of a large portion of the research that has been published over the last 22 years, on gender equality and related issues, with a specific focus on business and economics studies. Combining innovative methods drawn from both network analysis and text mining, we provide a synthesis of 15,465 scientific articles. We identify 27 main research topics, we measure their relevance from a semantic point of view and the relationships among them, highlighting the importance of each topic in the overall gender discourse. We find that prominent research topics mostly relate to women in the workforce–e.g., concerning compensation, role, education, decision-making and career progression. However, some of them are losing momentum, and some other research trends–for example related to female entrepreneurship, leadership and participation in the board of directors–are on the rise. Besides introducing a novel methodology to review broad literature streams, our paper offers a map of the main gender-research trends and presents the most popular and the emerging themes, as well as their intersections, outlining important avenues for future research.

Citation: Belingheri P, Chiarello F, Fronzetti Colladon A, Rovelli P (2021) Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0256474. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474

Editor: Elisa Ughetto, Politecnico di Torino, ITALY

Received: June 25, 2021; Accepted: August 6, 2021; Published: September 21, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Belingheri et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its supporting information files. The only exception is the text of the abstracts (over 15,000) that we have downloaded from Scopus. These abstracts can be retrieved from Scopus, but we do not have permission to redistribute them.

Funding: P.B and F.C.: Grant of the Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction of the University of Pisa (DESTEC) for the project “Measuring Gender Bias with Semantic Analysis: The Development of an Assessment Tool and its Application in the European Space Industry. P.B., F.C., A.F.C., P.R.: Grant of the Italian Association of Management Engineering (AiIG), “Misure di sostegno ai soci giovani AiIG” 2020, for the project “Gender Equality Through Data Intelligence (GEDI)”. F.C.: EU project ASSETs+ Project (Alliance for Strategic Skills addressing Emerging Technologies in Defence) EAC/A03/2018 - Erasmus+ programme, Sector Skills Alliances, Lot 3: Sector Skills Alliance for implementing a new strategic approach (Blueprint) to sectoral cooperation on skills G.A. NUMBER: 612678-EPP-1-2019-1-IT-EPPKA2-SSA-B.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The persistent gender inequalities that currently exist across the developed and developing world are receiving increasing attention from economists, policymakers, and the general public [e.g., 1 – 3 ]. Economic studies have indicated that women’s education and entry into the workforce contributes to social and economic well-being [e.g., 4 , 5 ], while their exclusion from the labor market and from managerial positions has an impact on overall labor productivity and income per capita [ 6 , 7 ]. The United Nations selected gender equality, with an emphasis on female education, as part of the Millennium Development Goals [ 8 ], and gender equality at-large as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030 [ 9 ]. These latter objectives involve not only developing nations, but rather all countries, to achieve economic, social and environmental well-being.

As is the case with many SDGs, gender equality is still far from being achieved and persists across education, access to opportunities, or presence in decision-making positions [ 7 , 10 , 11 ]. As we enter the last decade for the SDGs’ implementation, and while we are battling a global health pandemic, effective and efficient action becomes paramount to reach this ambitious goal.

Scholars have dedicated a massive effort towards understanding gender equality, its determinants, its consequences for women and society, and the appropriate actions and policies to advance women’s equality. Many topics have been covered, ranging from women’s education and human capital [ 12 , 13 ] and their role in society [e.g., 14 , 15 ], to their appointment in firms’ top ranked positions [e.g., 16 , 17 ] and performance implications [e.g., 18 , 19 ]. Despite some attempts, extant literature reviews provide a narrow view on these issues, restricted to specific topics–e.g., female students’ presence in STEM fields [ 20 ], educational gender inequality [ 5 ], the gender pay gap [ 21 ], the glass ceiling effect [ 22 ], leadership [ 23 ], entrepreneurship [ 24 ], women’s presence on the board of directors [ 25 , 26 ], diversity management [ 27 ], gender stereotypes in advertisement [ 28 ], or specific professions [ 29 ]. A comprehensive view on gender-related research, taking stock of key findings and under-studied topics is thus lacking.

Extant literature has also highlighted that gender issues, and their economic and social ramifications, are complex topics that involve a large number of possible antecedents and outcomes [ 7 ]. Indeed, gender equality actions are most effective when implemented in unison with other SDGs (e.g., with SDG 8, see [ 30 ]) in a synergetic perspective [ 10 ]. Many bodies of literature (e.g., business, economics, development studies, sociology and psychology) approach the problem of achieving gender equality from different perspectives–often addressing specific and narrow aspects. This sometimes leads to a lack of clarity about how different issues, circumstances, and solutions may be related in precipitating or mitigating gender inequality or its effects. As the number of papers grows at an increasing pace, this issue is exacerbated and there is a need to step back and survey the body of gender equality literature as a whole. There is also a need to examine synergies between different topics and approaches, as well as gaps in our understanding of how different problems and solutions work together. Considering the important topic of women’s economic and social empowerment, this paper aims to fill this gap by answering the following research question: what are the most relevant findings in the literature on gender equality and how do they relate to each other ?

To do so, we conduct a scoping review [ 31 ], providing a synthesis of 15,465 articles dealing with gender equity related issues published in the last twenty-two years, covering both the periods of the MDGs and the SDGs (i.e., 2000 to mid 2021) in all the journals indexed in the Academic Journal Guide’s 2018 ranking of business and economics journals. Given the huge amount of research conducted on the topic, we adopt an innovative methodology, which relies on social network analysis and text mining. These techniques are increasingly adopted when surveying large bodies of text. Recently, they were applied to perform analysis of online gender communication differences [ 32 ] and gender behaviors in online technology communities [ 33 ], to identify and classify sexual harassment instances in academia [ 34 ], and to evaluate the gender inclusivity of disaster management policies [ 35 ].

Applied to the title, abstracts and keywords of the articles in our sample, this methodology allows us to identify a set of 27 recurrent topics within which we automatically classify the papers. Introducing additional novelty, by means of the Semantic Brand Score (SBS) indicator [ 36 ] and the SBS BI app [ 37 ], we assess the importance of each topic in the overall gender equality discourse and its relationships with the other topics, as well as trends over time, with a more accurate description than that offered by traditional literature reviews relying solely on the number of papers presented in each topic.

This methodology, applied to gender equality research spanning the past twenty-two years, enables two key contributions. First, we extract the main message that each document is conveying and how this is connected to other themes in literature, providing a rich picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the emerging topics. Second, by examining the semantic relationship between topics and how tightly their discourses are linked, we can identify the key relationships and connections between different topics. This semi-automatic methodology is also highly reproducible with minimum effort.

This literature review is organized as follows. In the next section, we present how we selected relevant papers and how we analyzed them through text mining and social network analysis. We then illustrate the importance of 27 selected research topics, measured by means of the SBS indicator. In the results section, we present an overview of the literature based on the SBS results–followed by an in-depth narrative analysis of the top 10 topics (i.e., those with the highest SBS) and their connections. Subsequently, we highlight a series of under-studied connections between the topics where there is potential for future research. Through this analysis, we build a map of the main gender-research trends in the last twenty-two years–presenting the most popular themes. We conclude by highlighting key areas on which research should focused in the future.

Our aim is to map a broad topic, gender equality research, that has been approached through a host of different angles and through different disciplines. Scoping reviews are the most appropriate as they provide the freedom to map different themes and identify literature gaps, thereby guiding the recommendation of new research agendas [ 38 ].

Several practical approaches have been proposed to identify and assess the underlying topics of a specific field using big data [ 39 – 41 ], but many of them fail without proper paper retrieval and text preprocessing. This is specifically true for a research field such as the gender-related one, which comprises the work of scholars from different backgrounds. In this section, we illustrate a novel approach for the analysis of scientific (gender-related) papers that relies on methods and tools of social network analysis and text mining. Our procedure has four main steps: (1) data collection, (2) text preprocessing, (3) keywords extraction and classification, and (4) evaluation of semantic importance and image.

Data collection

In this study, we analyze 22 years of literature on gender-related research. Following established practice for scoping reviews [ 42 ], our data collection consisted of two main steps, which we summarize here below.

Firstly, we retrieved from the Scopus database all the articles written in English that contained the term “gender” in their title, abstract or keywords and were published in a journal listed in the Academic Journal Guide 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) ( https://charteredabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AJG2018-Methodology.pdf ), considering the time period from Jan 2000 to May 2021. We used this information considering that abstracts, titles and keywords represent the most informative part of a paper, while using the full-text would increase the signal-to-noise ratio for information extraction. Indeed, these textual elements already demonstrated to be reliable sources of information for the task of domain lexicon extraction [ 43 , 44 ]. We chose Scopus as source of literature because of its popularity, its update rate, and because it offers an API to ease the querying process. Indeed, while it does not allow to retrieve the full text of scientific articles, the Scopus API offers access to titles, abstracts, citation information and metadata for all its indexed scholarly journals. Moreover, we decided to focus on the journals listed in the AJG 2018 ranking because we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies only. The AJG is indeed widely used by universities and business schools as a reference point for journal and research rigor and quality. This first step, executed in June 2021, returned more than 55,000 papers.

In the second step–because a look at the papers showed very sparse results, many of which were not in line with the topic of this literature review (e.g., papers dealing with health care or medical issues, where the word gender indicates the gender of the patients)–we applied further inclusion criteria to make the sample more focused on the topic of this literature review (i.e., women’s gender equality issues). Specifically, we only retained those papers mentioning, in their title and/or abstract, both gender-related keywords (e.g., daughter, female, mother) and keywords referring to bias and equality issues (e.g., equality, bias, diversity, inclusion). After text pre-processing (see next section), keywords were first identified from a frequency-weighted list of words found in the titles, abstracts and keywords in the initial list of papers, extracted through text mining (following the same approach as [ 43 ]). They were selected by two of the co-authors independently, following respectively a bottom up and a top-down approach. The bottom-up approach consisted of examining the words found in the frequency-weighted list and classifying those related to gender and equality. The top-down approach consisted in searching in the word list for notable gender and equality-related words. Table 1 reports the sets of keywords we considered, together with some examples of words that were used to search for their presence in the dataset (a full list is provided in the S1 Text ). At end of this second step, we obtained a final sample of 15,465 relevant papers.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t001

Text processing and keyword extraction

Text preprocessing aims at structuring text into a form that can be analyzed by statistical models. In the present section, we describe the preprocessing steps we applied to paper titles and abstracts, which, as explained below, partially follow a standard text preprocessing pipeline [ 45 ]. These activities have been performed using the R package udpipe [ 46 ].

The first step is n-gram extraction (i.e., a sequence of words from a given text sample) to identify which n-grams are important in the analysis, since domain-specific lexicons are often composed by bi-grams and tri-grams [ 47 ]. Multi-word extraction is usually implemented with statistics and linguistic rules, thus using the statistical properties of n-grams or machine learning approaches [ 48 ]. However, for the present paper, we used Scopus metadata in order to have a more effective and efficient n-grams collection approach [ 49 ]. We used the keywords of each paper in order to tag n-grams with their associated keywords automatically. Using this greedy approach, it was possible to collect all the keywords listed by the authors of the papers. From this list, we extracted only keywords composed by two, three and four words, we removed all the acronyms and rare keywords (i.e., appearing in less than 1% of papers), and we clustered keywords showing a high orthographic similarity–measured using a Levenshtein distance [ 50 ] lower than 2, considering these groups of keywords as representing same concepts, but expressed with different spelling. After tagging the n-grams in the abstracts, we followed a common data preparation pipeline that consists of the following steps: (i) tokenization, that splits the text into tokens (i.e., single words and previously tagged multi-words); (ii) removal of stop-words (i.e. those words that add little meaning to the text, usually being very common and short functional words–such as “and”, “or”, or “of”); (iii) parts-of-speech tagging, that is providing information concerning the morphological role of a word and its morphosyntactic context (e.g., if the token is a determiner, the next token is a noun or an adjective with very high confidence, [ 51 ]); and (iv) lemmatization, which consists in substituting each word with its dictionary form (or lemma). The output of the latter step allows grouping together the inflected forms of a word. For example, the verbs “am”, “are”, and “is” have the shared lemma “be”, or the nouns “cat” and “cats” both share the lemma “cat”. We preferred lemmatization over stemming [ 52 ] in order to obtain more interpretable results.

In addition, we identified a further set of keywords (with respect to those listed in the “keywords” field) by applying a series of automatic words unification and removal steps, as suggested in past research [ 53 , 54 ]. We removed: sparse terms (i.e., occurring in less than 0.1% of all documents), common terms (i.e., occurring in more than 10% of all documents) and retained only nouns and adjectives. It is relevant to notice that no document was lost due to these steps. We then used the TF-IDF function [ 55 ] to produce a new list of keywords. We additionally tested other approaches for the identification and clustering of keywords–such as TextRank [ 56 ] or Latent Dirichlet Allocation [ 57 ]–without obtaining more informative results.

Classification of research topics

To guide the literature analysis, two experts met regularly to examine the sample of collected papers and to identify the main topics and trends in gender research. Initially, they conducted brainstorming sessions on the topics they expected to find, due to their knowledge of the literature. This led to an initial list of topics. Subsequently, the experts worked independently, also supported by the keywords in paper titles and abstracts extracted with the procedure described above.

Considering all this information, each expert identified and clustered relevant keywords into topics. At the end of the process, the two assignments were compared and exhibited a 92% agreement. Another meeting was held to discuss discordant cases and reach a consensus. This resulted in a list of 27 topics, briefly introduced in Table 2 and subsequently detailed in the following sections.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t002

Evaluation of semantic importance

Working on the lemmatized corpus of the 15,465 papers included in our sample, we proceeded with the evaluation of semantic importance trends for each topic and with the analysis of their connections and prevalent textual associations. To this aim, we used the Semantic Brand Score indicator [ 36 ], calculated through the SBS BI webapp [ 37 ] that also produced a brand image report for each topic. For this study we relied on the computing resources of the ENEA/CRESCO infrastructure [ 58 ].

The Semantic Brand Score (SBS) is a measure of semantic importance that combines methods of social network analysis and text mining. It is usually applied for the analysis of (big) textual data to evaluate the importance of one or more brands, names, words, or sets of keywords [ 36 ]. Indeed, the concept of “brand” is intended in a flexible way and goes beyond products or commercial brands. In this study, we evaluate the SBS time-trends of the keywords defining the research topics discussed in the previous section. Semantic importance comprises the three dimensions of topic prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Prevalence measures how frequently a research topic is used in the discourse. The more a topic is mentioned by scientific articles, the more the research community will be aware of it, with possible increase of future studies; this construct is partly related to that of brand awareness [ 59 ]. This effect is even stronger, considering that we are analyzing the title, abstract and keywords of the papers, i.e. the parts that have the highest visibility. A very important characteristic of the SBS is that it considers the relationships among words in a text. Topic importance is not just a matter of how frequently a topic is mentioned, but also of the associations a topic has in the text. Specifically, texts are transformed into networks of co-occurring words, and relationships are studied through social network analysis [ 60 ]. This step is necessary to calculate the other two dimensions of our semantic importance indicator. Accordingly, a social network of words is generated for each time period considered in the analysis–i.e., a graph made of n nodes (words) and E edges weighted by co-occurrence frequency, with W being the set of edge weights. The keywords representing each topic were clustered into single nodes.

The construct of diversity relates to that of brand image [ 59 ], in the sense that it considers the richness and distinctiveness of textual (topic) associations. Considering the above-mentioned networks, we calculated diversity using the distinctiveness centrality metric–as in the formula presented by Fronzetti Colladon and Naldi [ 61 ].

Lastly, connectivity was measured as the weighted betweenness centrality [ 62 , 63 ] of each research topic node. We used the formula presented by Wasserman and Faust [ 60 ]. The dimension of connectivity represents the “brokerage power” of each research topic–i.e., how much it can serve as a bridge to connect other terms (and ultimately topics) in the discourse [ 36 ].

The SBS is the final composite indicator obtained by summing the standardized scores of prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Standardization was carried out considering all the words in the corpus, for each specific timeframe.

This methodology, applied to a large and heterogeneous body of text, enables to automatically identify two important sets of information that add value to the literature review. Firstly, the relevance of each topic in literature is measured through a composite indicator of semantic importance, rather than simply looking at word frequencies. This provides a much richer picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the topics that are emerging in the literature. Secondly, it enables to examine the extent of the semantic relationship between topics, looking at how tightly their discourses are linked. In a field such as gender equality, where many topics are closely linked to each other and present overlaps in issues and solutions, this methodology offers a novel perspective with respect to traditional literature reviews. In addition, it ensures reproducibility over time and the possibility to semi-automatically update the analysis, as new papers become available.

Overview of main topics

In terms of descriptive textual statistics, our corpus is made of 15,465 text documents, consisting of a total of 2,685,893 lemmatized tokens (words) and 32,279 types. As a result, the type-token ratio is 1.2%. The number of hapaxes is 12,141, with a hapax-token ratio of 37.61%.

Fig 1 shows the list of 27 topics by decreasing SBS. The most researched topic is compensation , exceeding all others in prevalence, diversity, and connectivity. This means it is not only mentioned more often than other topics, but it is also connected to a greater number of other topics and is central to the discourse on gender equality. The next four topics are, in order of SBS, role , education , decision-making , and career progression . These topics, except for education , all concern women in the workforce. Between these first five topics and the following ones there is a clear drop in SBS scores. In particular, the topics that follow have a lower connectivity than the first five. They are hiring , performance , behavior , organization , and human capital . Again, except for behavior and human capital , the other three topics are purely related to women in the workforce. After another drop-off, the following topics deal prevalently with women in society. This trend highlights that research on gender in business journals has so far mainly paid attention to the conditions that women experience in business contexts, while also devoting some attention to women in society.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g001

Fig 2 shows the SBS time series of the top 10 topics. While there has been a general increase in the number of Scopus-indexed publications in the last decade, we notice that some SBS trends remain steady, or even decrease. In particular, we observe that the main topic of the last twenty-two years, compensation , is losing momentum. Since 2016, it has been surpassed by decision-making , education and role , which may indicate that literature is increasingly attempting to identify root causes of compensation inequalities. Moreover, in the last two years, the topics of hiring , performance , and organization are experiencing the largest importance increase.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g002

Fig 3 shows the SBS time trends of the remaining 17 topics (i.e., those not in the top 10). As we can see from the graph, there are some that maintain a steady trend–such as reputation , management , networks and governance , which also seem to have little importance. More relevant topics with average stationary trends (except for the last two years) are culture , family , and parenting . The feminine topic is among the most important here, and one of those that exhibit the larger variations over time (similarly to leadership ). On the other hand, the are some topics that, even if not among the most important, show increasing SBS trends; therefore, they could be considered as emerging topics and could become popular in the near future. These are entrepreneurship , leadership , board of directors , and sustainability . These emerging topics are also interesting to anticipate future trends in gender equality research that are conducive to overall equality in society.

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In addition to the SBS score of the different topics, the network of terms they are associated to enables to gauge the extent to which their images (textual associations) overlap or differ ( Fig 4 ).

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There is a central cluster of topics with high similarity, which are all connected with women in the workforce. The cluster includes topics such as organization , decision-making , performance , hiring , human capital , education and compensation . In addition, the topic of well-being is found within this cluster, suggesting that women’s equality in the workforce is associated to well-being considerations. The emerging topics of entrepreneurship and leadership are also closely connected with each other, possibly implying that leadership is a much-researched quality in female entrepreneurship. Topics that are relatively more distant include personality , politics , feminine , empowerment , management , board of directors , reputation , governance , parenting , masculine and network .

The following sections describe the top 10 topics and their main associations in literature (see Table 3 ), while providing a brief overview of the emerging topics.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t003

Compensation.

The topic of compensation is related to the topics of role , hiring , education and career progression , however, also sees a very high association with the words gap and inequality . Indeed, a well-known debate in degrowth economics centers around whether and how to adequately compensate women for their childbearing, childrearing, caregiver and household work [e.g., 30 ].

Even in paid work, women continue being offered lower compensations than their male counterparts who have the same job or cover the same role [ 64 – 67 ]. This severe inequality has been widely studied by scholars over the last twenty-two years. Dealing with this topic, some specific roles have been addressed. Specifically, research highlighted differences in compensation between female and male CEOs [e.g., 68 ], top executives [e.g., 69 ], and boards’ directors [e.g., 70 ]. Scholars investigated the determinants of these gaps, such as the gender composition of the board [e.g., 71 – 73 ] or women’s individual characteristics [e.g., 71 , 74 ].

Among these individual characteristics, education plays a relevant role [ 75 ]. Education is indeed presented as the solution for women, not only to achieve top executive roles, but also to reduce wage inequality [e.g., 76 , 77 ]. Past research has highlighted education influences on gender wage gaps, specifically referring to gender differences in skills [e.g., 78 ], college majors [e.g., 79 ], and college selectivity [e.g., 80 ].

Finally, the wage gap issue is strictly interrelated with hiring –e.g., looking at whether being a mother affects hiring and compensation [e.g., 65 , 81 ] or relating compensation to unemployment [e.g., 82 ]–and career progression –for instance looking at meritocracy [ 83 , 84 ] or the characteristics of the boss for whom women work [e.g., 85 ].

The roles covered by women have been deeply investigated. Scholars have focused on the role of women in their families and the society as a whole [e.g., 14 , 15 ], and, more widely, in business contexts [e.g., 18 , 81 ]. Indeed, despite still lagging behind their male counterparts [e.g., 86 , 87 ], in the last decade there has been an increase in top ranked positions achieved by women [e.g., 88 , 89 ]. Following this phenomenon, scholars have posed greater attention towards the presence of women in the board of directors [e.g., 16 , 18 , 90 , 91 ], given the increasing pressure to appoint female directors that firms, especially listed ones, have experienced. Other scholars have focused on the presence of women covering the role of CEO [e.g., 17 , 92 ] or being part of the top management team [e.g., 93 ]. Irrespectively of the level of analysis, all these studies tried to uncover the antecedents of women’s presence among top managers [e.g., 92 , 94 ] and the consequences of having a them involved in the firm’s decision-making –e.g., on performance [e.g., 19 , 95 , 96 ], risk [e.g., 97 , 98 ], and corporate social responsibility [e.g., 99 , 100 ].

Besides studying the difficulties and discriminations faced by women in getting a job [ 81 , 101 ], and, more specifically in the hiring , appointment, or career progression to these apical roles [e.g., 70 , 83 ], the majority of research of women’s roles dealt with compensation issues. Specifically, scholars highlight the pay-gap that still exists between women and men, both in general [e.g., 64 , 65 ], as well as referring to boards’ directors [e.g., 70 , 102 ], CEOs and executives [e.g., 69 , 103 , 104 ].

Finally, other scholars focused on the behavior of women when dealing with business. In this sense, particular attention has been paid to leadership and entrepreneurial behaviors. The former quite overlaps with dealing with the roles mentioned above, but also includes aspects such as leaders being stereotyped as masculine [e.g., 105 ], the need for greater exposure to female leaders to reduce biases [e.g., 106 ], or female leaders acting as queen bees [e.g., 107 ]. Regarding entrepreneurship , scholars mainly investigated women’s entrepreneurial entry [e.g., 108 , 109 ], differences between female and male entrepreneurs in the evaluations and funding received from investors [e.g., 110 , 111 ], and their performance gap [e.g., 112 , 113 ].

Education has long been recognized as key to social advancement and economic stability [ 114 ], for job progression and also a barrier to gender equality, especially in STEM-related fields. Research on education and gender equality is mostly linked with the topics of compensation , human capital , career progression , hiring , parenting and decision-making .

Education contributes to a higher human capital [ 115 ] and constitutes an investment on the part of women towards their future. In this context, literature points to the gender gap in educational attainment, and the consequences for women from a social, economic, personal and professional standpoint. Women are found to have less access to formal education and information, especially in emerging countries, which in turn may cause them to lose social and economic opportunities [e.g., 12 , 116 – 119 ]. Education in local and rural communities is also paramount to communicate the benefits of female empowerment , contributing to overall societal well-being [e.g., 120 ].

Once women access education, the image they have of the world and their place in society (i.e., habitus) affects their education performance [ 13 ] and is passed on to their children. These situations reinforce gender stereotypes, which become self-fulfilling prophecies that may negatively affect female students’ performance by lowering their confidence and heightening their anxiety [ 121 , 122 ]. Besides formal education, also the information that women are exposed to on a daily basis contributes to their human capital . Digital inequalities, for instance, stems from men spending more time online and acquiring higher digital skills than women [ 123 ].

Education is also a factor that should boost employability of candidates and thus hiring , career progression and compensation , however the relationship between these factors is not straightforward [ 115 ]. First, educational choices ( decision-making ) are influenced by variables such as self-efficacy and the presence of barriers, irrespectively of the career opportunities they offer, especially in STEM [ 124 ]. This brings additional difficulties to women’s enrollment and persistence in scientific and technical fields of study due to stereotypes and biases [ 125 , 126 ]. Moreover, access to education does not automatically translate into job opportunities for women and minority groups [ 127 , 128 ] or into female access to managerial positions [ 129 ].

Finally, parenting is reported as an antecedent of education [e.g., 130 ], with much of the literature focusing on the role of parents’ education on the opportunities afforded to children to enroll in education [ 131 – 134 ] and the role of parenting in their offspring’s perception of study fields and attitudes towards learning [ 135 – 138 ]. Parental education is also a predictor of the other related topics, namely human capital and compensation [ 139 ].

Decision-making.

This literature mainly points to the fact that women are thought to make decisions differently than men. Women have indeed different priorities, such as they care more about people’s well-being, working with people or helping others, rather than maximizing their personal (or their firm’s) gain [ 140 ]. In other words, women typically present more communal than agentic behaviors, which are instead more frequent among men [ 141 ]. These different attitude, behavior and preferences in turn affect the decisions they make [e.g., 142 ] and the decision-making of the firm in which they work [e.g., 143 ].

At the individual level, gender affects, for instance, career aspirations [e.g., 144 ] and choices [e.g., 142 , 145 ], or the decision of creating a venture [e.g., 108 , 109 , 146 ]. Moreover, in everyday life, women and men make different decisions regarding partners [e.g., 147 ], childcare [e.g., 148 ], education [e.g., 149 ], attention to the environment [e.g., 150 ] and politics [e.g., 151 ].

At the firm level, scholars highlighted, for example, how the presence of women in the board affects corporate decisions [e.g., 152 , 153 ], that female CEOs are more conservative in accounting decisions [e.g., 154 ], or that female CFOs tend to make more conservative decisions regarding the firm’s financial reporting [e.g., 155 ]. Nevertheless, firm level research also investigated decisions that, influenced by gender bias, affect women, such as those pertaining hiring [e.g., 156 , 157 ], compensation [e.g., 73 , 158 ], or the empowerment of women once appointed [ 159 ].

Career progression.

Once women have entered the workforce, the key aspect to achieve gender equality becomes career progression , including efforts toward overcoming the glass ceiling. Indeed, according to the SBS analysis, career progression is highly related to words such as work, social issues and equality. The topic with which it has the highest semantic overlap is role , followed by decision-making , hiring , education , compensation , leadership , human capital , and family .

Career progression implies an advancement in the hierarchical ladder of the firm, assigning managerial roles to women. Coherently, much of the literature has focused on identifying rationales for a greater female participation in the top management team and board of directors [e.g., 95 ] as well as the best criteria to ensure that the decision-makers promote the most valuable employees irrespectively of their individual characteristics, such as gender [e.g., 84 ]. The link between career progression , role and compensation is often provided in practice by performance appraisal exercises, frequently rooted in a culture of meritocracy that guides bonuses, salary increases and promotions. However, performance appraisals can actually mask gender-biased decisions where women are held to higher standards than their male colleagues [e.g., 83 , 84 , 95 , 160 , 161 ]. Women often have less opportunities to gain leadership experience and are less visible than their male colleagues, which constitute barriers to career advancement [e.g., 162 ]. Therefore, transparency and accountability, together with procedures that discourage discretionary choices, are paramount to achieve a fair career progression [e.g., 84 ], together with the relaxation of strict job boundaries in favor of cross-functional and self-directed tasks [e.g., 163 ].

In addition, a series of stereotypes about the type of leadership characteristics that are required for top management positions, which fit better with typical male and agentic attributes, are another key barrier to career advancement for women [e.g., 92 , 160 ].

Hiring is the entrance gateway for women into the workforce. Therefore, it is related to other workforce topics such as compensation , role , career progression , decision-making , human capital , performance , organization and education .

A first stream of literature focuses on the process leading up to candidates’ job applications, demonstrating that bias exists before positions are even opened, and it is perpetuated both by men and women through networking and gatekeeping practices [e.g., 164 , 165 ].

The hiring process itself is also subject to biases [ 166 ], for example gender-congruity bias that leads to men being preferred candidates in male-dominated sectors [e.g., 167 ], women being hired in positions with higher risk of failure [e.g., 168 ] and limited transparency and accountability afforded by written processes and procedures [e.g., 164 ] that all contribute to ascriptive inequality. In addition, providing incentives for evaluators to hire women may actually work to this end; however, this is not the case when supporting female candidates endangers higher-ranking male ones [ 169 ].

Another interesting perspective, instead, looks at top management teams’ composition and the effects on hiring practices, indicating that firms with more women in top management are less likely to lay off staff [e.g., 152 ].

Performance.

Several scholars posed their attention towards women’s performance, its consequences [e.g., 170 , 171 ] and the implications of having women in decision-making positions [e.g., 18 , 19 ].

At the individual level, research focused on differences in educational and academic performance between women and men, especially referring to the gender gap in STEM fields [e.g., 171 ]. The presence of stereotype threats–that is the expectation that the members of a social group (e.g., women) “must deal with the possibility of being judged or treated stereotypically, or of doing something that would confirm the stereotype” [ 172 ]–affects women’s interested in STEM [e.g., 173 ], as well as their cognitive ability tests, penalizing them [e.g., 174 ]. A stronger gender identification enhances this gap [e.g., 175 ], whereas mentoring and role models can be used as solutions to this problem [e.g., 121 ]. Despite the negative effect of stereotype threats on girls’ performance [ 176 ], female and male students perform equally in mathematics and related subjects [e.g., 177 ]. Moreover, while individuals’ performance at school and university generally affects their achievements and the field in which they end up working, evidence reveals that performance in math or other scientific subjects does not explain why fewer women enter STEM working fields; rather this gap depends on other aspects, such as culture, past working experiences, or self-efficacy [e.g., 170 ]. Finally, scholars have highlighted the penalization that women face for their positive performance, for instance when they succeed in traditionally male areas [e.g., 178 ]. This penalization is explained by the violation of gender-stereotypic prescriptions [e.g., 179 , 180 ], that is having women well performing in agentic areas, which are typical associated to men. Performance penalization can thus be overcome by clearly conveying communal characteristics and behaviors [ 178 ].

Evidence has been provided on how the involvement of women in boards of directors and decision-making positions affects firms’ performance. Nevertheless, results are mixed, with some studies showing positive effects on financial [ 19 , 181 , 182 ] and corporate social performance [ 99 , 182 , 183 ]. Other studies maintain a negative association [e.g., 18 ], and other again mixed [e.g., 184 ] or non-significant association [e.g., 185 ]. Also with respect to the presence of a female CEO, mixed results emerged so far, with some researches demonstrating a positive effect on firm’s performance [e.g., 96 , 186 ], while other obtaining only a limited evidence of this relationship [e.g., 103 ] or a negative one [e.g., 187 ].

Finally, some studies have investigated whether and how women’s performance affects their hiring [e.g., 101 ] and career progression [e.g., 83 , 160 ]. For instance, academic performance leads to different returns in hiring for women and men. Specifically, high-achieving men are called back significantly more often than high-achieving women, which are penalized when they have a major in mathematics; this result depends on employers’ gendered standards for applicants [e.g., 101 ]. Once appointed, performance ratings are more strongly related to promotions for women than men, and promoted women typically show higher past performance ratings than those of promoted men. This suggesting that women are subject to stricter standards for promotion [e.g., 160 ].

Behavioral aspects related to gender follow two main streams of literature. The first examines female personality and behavior in the workplace, and their alignment with cultural expectations or stereotypes [e.g., 188 ] as well as their impacts on equality. There is a common bias that depicts women as less agentic than males. Certain characteristics, such as those more congruent with male behaviors–e.g., self-promotion [e.g., 189 ], negotiation skills [e.g., 190 ] and general agentic behavior [e.g., 191 ]–, are less accepted in women. However, characteristics such as individualism in women have been found to promote greater gender equality in society [ 192 ]. In addition, behaviors such as display of emotions [e.g., 193 ], which are stereotypically female, work against women’s acceptance in the workplace, requiring women to carefully moderate their behavior to avoid exclusion. A counter-intuitive result is that women and minorities, which are more marginalized in the workplace, tend to be better problem-solvers in innovation competitions due to their different knowledge bases [ 194 ].

The other side of the coin is examined in a parallel literature stream on behavior towards women in the workplace. As a result of biases, prejudices and stereotypes, women may experience adverse behavior from their colleagues, such as incivility and harassment, which undermine their well-being [e.g., 195 , 196 ]. Biases that go beyond gender, such as for overweight people, are also more strongly applied to women [ 197 ].

Organization.

The role of women and gender bias in organizations has been studied from different perspectives, which mirror those presented in detail in the following sections. Specifically, most research highlighted the stereotypical view of leaders [e.g., 105 ] and the roles played by women within firms, for instance referring to presence in the board of directors [e.g., 18 , 90 , 91 ], appointment as CEOs [e.g., 16 ], or top executives [e.g., 93 ].

Scholars have investigated antecedents and consequences of the presence of women in these apical roles. On the one side they looked at hiring and career progression [e.g., 83 , 92 , 160 , 168 , 198 ], finding women typically disadvantaged with respect to their male counterparts. On the other side, they studied women’s leadership styles and influence on the firm’s decision-making [e.g., 152 , 154 , 155 , 199 ], with implications for performance [e.g., 18 , 19 , 96 ].

Human capital.

Human capital is a transverse topic that touches upon many different aspects of female gender equality. As such, it has the most associations with other topics, starting with education as mentioned above, with career-related topics such as role , decision-making , hiring , career progression , performance , compensation , leadership and organization . Another topic with which there is a close connection is behavior . In general, human capital is approached both from the education standpoint but also from the perspective of social capital.

The behavioral aspect in human capital comprises research related to gender differences for example in cultural and religious beliefs that influence women’s attitudes and perceptions towards STEM subjects [ 142 , 200 – 202 ], towards employment [ 203 ] or towards environmental issues [ 150 , 204 ]. These cultural differences also emerge in the context of globalization which may accelerate gender equality in the workforce [ 205 , 206 ]. Gender differences also appear in behaviors such as motivation [ 207 ], and in negotiation [ 190 ], and have repercussions on women’s decision-making related to their careers. The so-called gender equality paradox sees women in countries with lower gender equality more likely to pursue studies and careers in STEM fields, whereas the gap in STEM enrollment widens as countries achieve greater equality in society [ 171 ].

Career progression is modeled by literature as a choice-process where personal preferences, culture and decision-making affect the chosen path and the outcomes. Some literature highlights how women tend to self-select into different professions than men, often due to stereotypes rather than actual ability to perform in these professions [ 142 , 144 ]. These stereotypes also affect the perceptions of female performance or the amount of human capital required to equal male performance [ 110 , 193 , 208 ], particularly for mothers [ 81 ]. It is therefore often assumed that women are better suited to less visible and less leadership -oriented roles [ 209 ]. Women also express differing preferences towards work-family balance, which affect whether and how they pursue human capital gains [ 210 ], and ultimately their career progression and salary .

On the other hand, men are often unaware of gendered processes and behaviors that they carry forward in their interactions and decision-making [ 211 , 212 ]. Therefore, initiatives aimed at increasing managers’ human capital –by raising awareness of gender disparities in their organizations and engaging them in diversity promotion–are essential steps to counter gender bias and segregation [ 213 ].

Emerging topics: Leadership and entrepreneurship

Among the emerging topics, the most pervasive one is women reaching leadership positions in the workforce and in society. This is still a rare occurrence for two main types of factors, on the one hand, bias and discrimination make it harder for women to access leadership positions [e.g., 214 – 216 ], on the other hand, the competitive nature and high pressure associated with leadership positions, coupled with the lack of women currently represented, reduce women’s desire to achieve them [e.g., 209 , 217 ]. Women are more effective leaders when they have access to education, resources and a diverse environment with representation [e.g., 218 , 219 ].

One sector where there is potential for women to carve out a leadership role is entrepreneurship . Although at the start of the millennium the discourse on entrepreneurship was found to be “discriminatory, gender-biased, ethnocentrically determined and ideologically controlled” [ 220 ], an increasing body of literature is studying how to stimulate female entrepreneurship as an alternative pathway to wealth, leadership and empowerment [e.g., 221 ]. Many barriers exist for women to access entrepreneurship, including the institutional and legal environment, social and cultural factors, access to knowledge and resources, and individual behavior [e.g., 222 , 223 ]. Education has been found to raise women’s entrepreneurial intentions [e.g., 224 ], although this effect is smaller than for men [e.g., 109 ]. In addition, increasing self-efficacy and risk-taking behavior constitute important success factors [e.g., 225 ].

Finally, the topic of sustainability is worth mentioning, as it is the primary objective of the SDGs and is closely associated with societal well-being. As society grapples with the effects of climate change and increasing depletion of natural resources, a narrative has emerged on women and their greater link to the environment [ 226 ]. Studies in developed countries have found some support for women leaders’ attention to sustainability issues in firms [e.g., 227 – 229 ], and smaller resource consumption by women [ 230 ]. At the same time, women will likely be more affected by the consequences of climate change [e.g., 230 ] but often lack the decision-making power to influence local decision-making on resource management and environmental policies [e.g., 231 ].

Research gaps and conclusions

Research on gender equality has advanced rapidly in the past decades, with a steady increase in publications, both in mainstream topics related to women in education and the workforce, and in emerging topics. Through a novel approach combining methods of text mining and social network analysis, we examined a comprehensive body of literature comprising 15,465 papers published between 2000 and mid 2021 on topics related to gender equality. We identified a set of 27 topics addressed by the literature and examined their connections.

At the highest level of abstraction, it is worth noting that papers abound on the identification of issues related to gender inequalities and imbalances in the workforce and in society. Literature has thoroughly examined the (unconscious) biases, barriers, stereotypes, and discriminatory behaviors that women are facing as a result of their gender. Instead, there are much fewer papers that discuss or demonstrate effective solutions to overcome gender bias [e.g., 121 , 143 , 145 , 163 , 194 , 213 , 232 ]. This is partly due to the relative ease in studying the status quo, as opposed to studying changes in the status quo. However, we observed a shift in the more recent years towards solution seeking in this domain, which we strongly encourage future researchers to focus on. In the future, we may focus on collecting and mapping pro-active contributions to gender studies, using additional Natural Language Processing techniques, able to measure the sentiment of scientific papers [ 43 ].

All of the mainstream topics identified in our literature review are closely related, and there is a wealth of insights looking at the intersection between issues such as education and career progression or human capital and role . However, emerging topics are worthy of being furtherly explored. It would be interesting to see more work on the topic of female entrepreneurship , exploring aspects such as education , personality , governance , management and leadership . For instance, how can education support female entrepreneurship? How can self-efficacy and risk-taking behaviors be taught or enhanced? What are the differences in managerial and governance styles of female entrepreneurs? Which personality traits are associated with successful entrepreneurs? Which traits are preferred by venture capitalists and funding bodies?

The emerging topic of sustainability also deserves further attention, as our society struggles with climate change and its consequences. It would be interesting to see more research on the intersection between sustainability and entrepreneurship , looking at how female entrepreneurs are tackling sustainability issues, examining both their business models and their company governance . In addition, scholars are suggested to dig deeper into the relationship between family values and behaviors.

Moreover, it would be relevant to understand how women’s networks (social capital), or the composition and structure of social networks involving both women and men, enable them to increase their remuneration and reach top corporate positions, participate in key decision-making bodies, and have a voice in communities. Furthermore, the achievement of gender equality might significantly change firm networks and ecosystems, with important implications for their performance and survival.

Similarly, research at the nexus of (corporate) governance , career progression , compensation and female empowerment could yield useful insights–for example discussing how enterprises, institutions and countries are managed and the impact for women and other minorities. Are there specific governance structures that favor diversity and inclusion?

Lastly, we foresee an emerging stream of research pertaining how the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged women, especially in the workforce, by making gender biases more evident.

For our analysis, we considered a set of 15,465 articles downloaded from the Scopus database (which is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature). As we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies, we only considered those papers published in journals listed in the Academic Journal Guide (AJG) 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS). All the journals listed in this ranking are also indexed by Scopus. Therefore, looking at a single database (i.e., Scopus) should not be considered a limitation of our study. However, future research could consider different databases and inclusion criteria.

With our literature review, we offer researchers a comprehensive map of major gender-related research trends over the past twenty-two years. This can serve as a lens to look to the future, contributing to the achievement of SDG5. Researchers may use our study as a starting point to identify key themes addressed in the literature. In addition, our methodological approach–based on the use of the Semantic Brand Score and its webapp–could support scholars interested in reviewing other areas of research.

Supporting information

S1 text. keywords used for paper selection..

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Acknowledgments

The computing resources and the related technical support used for this work have been provided by CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure and its staff. CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure is funded by ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development and by Italian and European research programmes (see http://www.cresco.enea.it/english for information).

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Directing Research Toward Health Equity: a Health Equity Research Impact Assessment

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• Published: 04 May 2021
• Volume 36 , pages 2803–2808, ( 2021 )

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• Enrico G. Castillo MD MSHPM   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3807-1125 1 , 2 &
• Christina Harris MD 3  

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Despite medical research advancements, inequities persist, as research has enhanced the health of some while leaving many communities untouched. Reforms are needed to direct research toward health equity, both during this pandemic and beyond. All research must currently pass scientific and ethical review processes, but neither may adequately examine a project’s potential impact on inequities and local communities. Research stakeholders need practical tools to help review and examine any given study’s impact on health equity. We articulate a health equity research impact assessment, which draws from existing research impact assessments and health disparities research measures and frameworks. We describe how this tool was developed and how it may be used by research reviewers, researchers, academic institutions, and funding agencies to elevate health equity in medical science.

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In this unprecedented time of cross-institutional research collaborations to address the coronavirus pandemic, we must acknowledge that all communities do not equally benefit from scientific advances. 1 Rather, medical research has advanced the health of some and left others behind, leaving untouched or even worsening some inequities for Black and Brown communities. 2 , 3 Calls for anti-racism and equity in research have been made in many fields including public policy, mathematics, business, law, and art. 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 These have been echoed in medical research. 10 , 11 , 12 To realize this goal, we need intentional practices that integrate health equity into the work of all medical research—from basic science to public health.

Inequities in health and healthcare are unfair differences in outcomes based on characteristics like race, gender, sexual orientation, insurance status, neighborhood, and language, with roots in racism and oppression. 13 , 14 Health equity is the “principle underlying a commitment to reduce—and, ultimately, eliminate—disparities in health and in its determinants, including social determinants. Pursuing health equity means striving for the highest possible standard of health for all people and giving special attention to the needs of those at greatest risk of poor health, based on social conditions.” 13 As a research theme, health equity cuts across scientific fields, from basic science to epidemiology. 15 As a research goal, health equity is a lens through which one can view all research activities and outcomes.

All research must be scientifically sound and ethical, undergoing separate review processes for each, but practical tools are needed to achieve critical reflexivity about any given study’s potential to address inequities in this pandemic and beyond. Health impact assessments are tools that assess public policies’ effects on community health, for example, documenting the effects of a new highway project on public exercise spaces and asthma. The Society of Practitioners of Health Impact Assessment developed Equity Metrics for Health Impact Assessment Practice , which incorporate principles like community participation and shared decision-making into health impact assessments. 16 While focused on equity, their tool is not designed for use in medical research review processes. Research impact assessments assess the outcomes of proposed or completed medical research on a range of domains to help researchers report the impact of their research to funders and other stakeholders (see 17 for a systematic review). The Research Impact Framework, for example, is designed as a flexible checklist of 27 prompts to help researchers and institutions create qualitative descriptions of a study’s impact in four domains: academic (e.g., publications), policy, clinical, and societal. 18 , 19 The Research Impact Framework dedicates only one item to health equity. To our knowledge, there is no tool dedicated to assessing medical research’s impact on health equity. Our proposed assessment aims to fill an important gap by serving as a tool designed for health researchers to help direct scientific discovery and research peer review toward equity.

DEVELOPMENT OF A HEALTH EQUITY RESEARCH IMPACT ASSESSMENT

In Los Angeles during this pandemic, deadly inequities experienced by Black, Latinx, and other minority communities parallel disturbing national trends and are due to longstanding racism and health inequities. 11 , 20 Recognizing these and other local inequities, the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, created our Health Equity Research and Advisory Committee. The committee is chaired by the authors (EC, CH) and includes nine researchers in psychiatry, general internal medicine, gastroenterology, epidemiology, trauma surgery, emergency medicine, and pediatrics. All members are experienced researchers who specialize in health disparities and community-partnered research, especially with local racial/ethnic minority communities. Our committee’s initial charge was to promote health equity in the medical school’s portfolio of COVID-19 research. Our work has evolved to integrate health equity into all research beyond COVID-19 and develop health equity research review processes.

Our initial motivation in developing this tool was to enrich the peer review process for COVID-19 research funding with a more systematic assessment of studies’ potential health equity impact (Box 1 ). To develop our tool’s domains and content, we reviewed published health equity–related research frameworks. 15 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 Our assessment’s domains comprise common research processes—community engagement and research partnerships; recruitment, representativeness, and generalizability; intervention design; interpretation and contextualization; and dissemination of research findings and community benefit—that the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and World Health Organization have described as critical to the advancement of health disparities research and health equity in medical science. 15 , 22 Domains’ content is drawn from published community-partnered and health disparities research measures and frameworks (see 15 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ). Whereas those published examples convey their content to guide health disparities research priorities and strategic planning, we found that they were not readily useful for the research review process.

The authors (EC, CH) developed the initial version of this assessment, which was reviewed by all committee members who provided feedback on domains (e.g., split “Community Engagement and Investment” into two domains: “Community Engagement and Research Partnerships” and “Community Benefit”) and the phrasing of content for clarity and completeness. We piloted the use of our tool to review 30 applications for funding allocated to COVID-19 health equity research. Studies were in diverse medical and non-medical fields—ophthalmology, primary care, geriatrics, psychiatry, pediatrics, public health, law, and environmental health sciences. Studies focused on a range of COVID-19-related topics, from public health models for re-opening public schools to multimedia public health education for Spanish-speaking individuals with serious mental illness. This pilot generated multiple rounds of review and revision of the tool by our committee (e.g., revised “Representation” domain as “Recruitment, Representativeness, and Generalizability,” and added the explanatory first bullet point in the domain “Interpretation and Contextualization”), until the tool reached its current form.

EXAMINING AND PROMOTING HEALTH EQUITY IN RESEARCH DESIGN

Frameworks by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, World Health Organization, and others highlight methodological considerations to advance health disparities science and promote health equity. 15 , 22 Like the Research Impact Framework, our assessment conveys its content as a series of prompts and questions to promote critical reflection and make it readily useful for researchers and reviewers, regardless of their expertise in health equity. 18 , 19 We did not aim to create a quantitative instrument that would generate, for example, a health equity score. We also do not suggest that all studies must address every component of each domain.

Community and interdisciplinary research partnerships have been described as critical for shortening the translational research-to-service gap and for addressing the needs of diverse, under-resourced communities. 21 , 22 , 23 The Community Engagement and Research Partnerships domain includes prompts about the engagement of diverse community stakeholders, particularly those who may mistrust medical research due to histories of marginalization and abuses. As some basic and translational studies may not include opportunities for community engagement, this domain includes a prompt to consider how those studies may include plans for interdisciplinary partnerships, for example, with health services or public health researchers, to facilitate research translation and dissemination to address disparities. 14

Underrepresentation of minority populations in medical research is multi-factorial and has a long history that has engendered understandable mistrust, but many best practices exist to engage diverse populations in research. 24 , 25 , 26 Recruitment, Representativeness, and Generalizability invites deliberation about who is included or excluded from a study, emphasizing non-English language access and representation not just by age, race, and gender, but by other sociodemographics (e.g., sexual orientation, insurance status). This focus on representation should not be understood as reinforcing myths about race as biologically determined, but rather is animated by the goal of making science more accountable to diverse communities. 29

Intervention Design considers whether a study’s intervention (if applicable) is generalizable and appropriate to the needs of its population of focus. 15 , 22 , 27 Given the multi-factorial nature of inequities, the domain includes a prompt to consider how a proposed intervention may act at multiple social-ecological levels and involve multiple systems and sectors. Similarly, Interpretation and Contextualization considers whether a given study collects data that is sufficient to interpret its proposed findings, drawing from literature about potential misinterpretation of research findings in the absence of contextual data, community input, or other safeguards. 15 , 22 , 27

Dissemination of Research Findings and Community Benefit acknowledges a common failure for medical research to consider racial and ethnic minority populations and under-resourced communities as the end-users of scientific advancements. 21 , 23 , 25 , 28 One example in this pandemic is vaccine distribution, which has the potential to reinforce or worsen inequities without diverse stakeholder engagement, community-informed and culturally tailored health education, and the integration of social vulnerability metrics into allocation plans. 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 This domain invites explicit consideration about the immediate and sustained benefit of research for diverse, under-resourced, and other vulnerable communities, either directly or through intentional translational research and policy partnerships. The tool closes with prompts about a study’s Overall Impact on Health Equity , urging reflection on the potential for a study to address or possibly worsen inequities.

“IT IS TIME TO BE EXPLICIT”: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS

Practical applications.

Our Health Equity Research Impact Assessment can be used as a practical tool by multiple research stakeholders, one that brings health equity into conversations where it may have been notably absent or under-systematized (Box 2 ). Our Health Equity Research and Advisory Committee used this tool in the review of applications for COVID-19 research funding, as described above. Committee members’ consistent feedback was that this tool enabled a more intentional and systematic approach to reviewing a studies’ impact on health equity compared to ad hoc approaches they had used previously (e.g., assessing a study’s overall public health impact).

Sharing the results of our health equity–focused reviews with researchers has given them the opportunity to revise their studies. This has yielded moments of reflection and dialog, as we have encouraged researchers to recruit study populations outside of our healthcare institution, partner with county hospitals and health departments, form interdisciplinary collaborations, and center community voices.

This tool may be used by other stakeholders, as detailed in Box 2 . By asking themselves the questions in this tool, researchers have the opportunity to critique their study objectives and identify opportunities for research and community partnerships. Research institutions and funding agencies can use the prompts in this tool to examine individual studies or adapt the prompts to examine their overall research portfolios (e.g., changing “How will the study engage community leaders…” to “How does our portfolio of research engage community leaders…”). In sum, we hope that our assessment invites multiple stakeholders to engage in more systematic reflection on health equity in medical science.

Limitations

While we used established framework development methods to create our tool, we have not conducted a formal validation study. We view this articulation of a health equity research assessment as an important first step. Future studies are needed to further refine this assessment, through cognitive and qualitative interviews with diverse research and community stakeholders, and to assess the effects of this tool’s use on research designs, research review processes, and overall research impact on local and national health equity outcomes. Of note, we designed this qualitative tool, like the Research Impact Assessment, as a flexible series of prompts for research stakeholders. We did not design it as a quantitative psychometric scale, and so tests of psychometric validity (e.g., item response theory) were not used.

Future Directions

We propose that health equity impact reviews be instated alongside existing scientific and ethical review processes. This will require the support of national research organizations and academic institutions. Institutions interested in adopting this framework could start by identifying local experts in health equity and community partnerships in research; tailoring our framework with input from those experts and community leaders; and directing researchers and review committees to conduct prospective and retrospective health equity impact reviews.

We propose this framework as a living, not a static document. We encourage institutions and researchers to adapt this tool over time and by locale, institutional history, and other exigencies. Some institutions have extensive community partnerships in research and can revise this framework to further prioritize and extend that work. Other institutions have broken relationships with neighboring diverse, under-resourced communities, arising from legacies of neglect or research abuses. 2 , 3 Those institutions might use this framework to first examine their research portfolio and identify opportunities for re-engagement with community leaders and dissemination of research findings to local under-resourced communities.

This framework should not be used as a litmus test to silence scientific discovery or foundational laboratory research. Additionally, this framework should not be used only for applied research fields like public health and health services research. Health equity goals are relevant to all medical research. To be sure, any research impact assessment places certain values and expectations on our scientific community. Social medicine has long shown how all scientific endeavors are immersed in explicit and implicit values, social norms, and dominant ideologies. In the absence of a well-articulated health equity framework, other values will naturally prevail in medical science. 34 , 35

We view this tool as an initial step. Many reforms are needed to elevate health equity as a guiding mission for medical research. 34 , 36 At the macro level, Black and Latinx individuals are underrepresented in our scientific community, particularly in senior faculty positions and on study sections, and experience inequities in grant funding. 36 , 37 , 38 We must also address the systematic deprioritization of health disparities, community, and population-level research. 36 , 39 , 40 We propose our framework as one tool for the work ahead, which will require a moment-by-moment examination of the ways our science is designed, conducted, funded, supported, and disseminated.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to recognize the members of the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine COVID-19 Health Equity Research and Advisory Committee, for their expertise and dedication to promoting health equity in research: Drs. Eraka Bath, Rochelle Dicker, Eric Esrailian, Alma Guerrero, Helena Hansen, Nina Harawa, and Breena Taira.

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Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, Center for Social Medicine and Humanities, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

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Castillo, E.G., Harris, C. Directing Research Toward Health Equity: a Health Equity Research Impact Assessment. J GEN INTERN MED 36 , 2803–2808 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-021-06789-3

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Step-by-Step Guide on Using Equity Principles in Social Science Research

Prac­tices that acknowl­edge and account for dif­fer­ences between cul­tures have become increas­ing­ly com­mon among social sci­ence researchers. Although this shift means that the dis­tinct voic­es of com­mu­ni­ties of col­or are more like­ly to be heard, rep­re­sen­ta­tion is not enough to coun­ter­act the inequities that have been baked into sys­tems for gen­er­a­tions. A new work­ing paper from Child Trends, pub­lished with sup­port from the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion, sug­gests how researchers can do more to achieve equi­table out­comes for chil­dren, fam­i­lies and communities.

How to Embed a Racial and Eth­nic Equi­ty Per­spec­tive in Research is a prac­ti­cal guide to incor­po­rat­ing equi­ty through­out the research process and to under­stand­ing how race and eth­nic­i­ty con­tribute to dis­parate results. The guide was devel­oped through inter­views with 34 researchers, fun­ders and pol­i­cy­mak­ers nation­wide with expe­ri­ence in apply­ing racial and eth­nic equi­ty prin­ci­ples to research and evaluation.

“ How to Embed a Racial and Eth­nic Equi­ty Per­spec­tive in Research is an impor­tant guide to help researchers under­stand the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion and per­spec­tives to the qual­i­ty of their work,” said Kan­tahya­nee Mur­ray, a senior research asso­ciate at Casey. ​ “ These steps can help ensure that research and eval­u­a­tion pro­duce not just strong results but equi­table results.”

Although there’s no uni­ver­sal way to incor­po­rate an equi­ty per­spec­tive — the approach must be tai­lored to the specifics of the research project — the paper out­lines sev­er­al fun­da­men­tals that can help researchers be successful:

• Exam­ine their own back­grounds and biases.
• Make a com­mit­ment to dig deep­er into the data.
• Rec­og­nize that the research process itself affects com­mu­ni­ties and that researchers have a role in ensur­ing research ben­e­fits communities.
• Engage com­mu­ni­ties as part­ners in research and give them credit.
• Guard against the implied or explic­it assump­tion that white is the nor­ma­tive, stan­dard or default position.

These guide­lines, when applied to the major stages of the research process, lead to a much deep­er under­stand­ing of racial and eth­nic inequities — and help ensure that the research process does not per­pet­u­ate them.

The paper also explores how an equi­ty per­spec­tive plays out in prac­tice, offer­ing sug­ges­tions for researchers at each stage of the process:

• Before a study begins, the researcher should assess the land­scape to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the research con­text by gath­er­ing the per­spec­tives of peo­ple affect­ed by or involved in the research. Com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­er engage­ment will shape the research process and may uncov­er root caus­es of the issue.
• The researcher should devel­op research ques­tions and designs that aim to advance racial and eth­nic equi­ty. To this end, researchers can involve racial­ly and eth­ni­cal­ly diverse research teams, con­struct a research design that is accept­ed by the com­mu­ni­ty, devel­op research ques­tions that tar­get root caus­es and address equi­ty when iden­ti­fy­ing data col­lec­tion meth­ods and instruments.
• In data analy­sis , both qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive, the researcher should dis­ag­gre­gate data, explore con­nec­tions across groups, dis­cuss data trends with the appro­pri­ate con­text, beware of implic­it bias and involve the com­mu­ni­ty, where pos­si­ble, in data interpretation.
• The researcher should devel­op a dis­sem­i­na­tion plan that includes the com­mu­ni­ty as one of the mul­ti­ple pri­ma­ry audi­ences for research find­ings, con­sid­er var­i­ous for­mats for report­ing results and pri­or­i­tize find­ings that the com­mu­ni­ty can act on and use.

Resources on Advanc­ing Equi­ty and Inclusion

Learn more about embed­ding equi­ty in evaluation

Fol­low sev­en steps to using equi­ty in social change efforts

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How to do (or not to do)…how to embed equity in the conduct of health research: lessons from piloting the 8Quity tool

Misimi kakoti.

The George Institute for Global Health, 308, Third Floor, Elegance Tower, Plot No. 8, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi 110025, India

Devaki Nambiar

Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Australia

Prasanna School of Public Health, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka 576104, India

Amy Bestman

The George Institute for Global Health, Level 5, 1 King Street, Newtown, NSW 2042, Australia

Damian Garozzo-Vaglio

The George Institute for Global Health, Imperial College London, 84 Wood Lane, London, W12 0BZ, UK

Associated Data

The data underlying this article cannot be shared publicly to ensure privacy and confidentiality of individuals who participated in the study. It will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Global health research reflects and can either perpetuate or challenge the complex power hierarchies and inequities that characterize our health systems and the societies in which they are situated. The imperative to embed equity in health research aligns with broader efforts globally to promote equitable partnerships among researchers, and between researchers and the communities potentially impacted by their research, or with whom knowledge is co-produced. We describe lessons learnt from piloting a heuristic and diagnostic tool for researchers to assess integration of equity considerations into their research practices. The ‘8Quity’ tool comprises eight domains of equity we developed which roughly correspond to the typical stages in the research process—from team formation to capacity strengthening, research ethics and governance to relationships with research partners, participants and stakeholders beyond the project period. Resources that detail how this can be done on a practical level are also shared, corresponding to each of the eight domains. We acknowledge that tools like 8Quity may be helpful, even necessary, but are insufficient for the broader societal changes required to ensure equity in the research enterprise. However, by firmly setting intentions and accountabilities within our research practices, we (as researchers) can play a role, however modest, in turning the tide of the injustices that leave some communities behind.

Key messages

• Health researchers should ensure that the principles of equity and social justice are more consciously incorporated during all the stages of the research process—this is an ethical imperative.
• Embedding equity in health research is integral to furthering the decolonization of global health and the Leave No One Behind agenda of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
• A checklist and linked resources enable reflection on, planning for and review of equity integration in each stage of the research process to help health researchers to conduct research that deliberately integrates equity and enables organizations to ensure institutional support to researchers in this pursuit.

Introduction

The Sustainable Development Goals agenda has helped foreground equity in development work, which in the health sector builds on various precedents such as the Alma Ata Declaration and the Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Guides and tools to carry out ‘equity mainstreaming’ have emerged over the past decade placing particular emphasis on equity as praxis in research ( Peterson et al. , 2021 ; Porroche-Escudero et al. , 2021 ; Pratt, 2021a ; Larson et al. , 2022 ; Public Health Agency of Canada, 2022 ). Specific ethical considerations exist for guiding the conduct of health systems and policy research and biomedical research such as ‘equity-relevant trials’ ( Mbuagbaw et al. , 2017 ; Pratt et al. , 2020 ). Guidelines have also been developed for systematic reviews to consider equity in evidence synthesis process ( Welch et al. , 2012 ). Research funding agencies are designing frameworks and toolkits to guide equity considerations in health research ( Government of Canada CI of HR, 2021 ; Porroche-Escudero and Popay, 2021 ; Rotz et al. , 2021 ). Recent work highlights that diversity of staff within research institutions is an integral component of positive research culture and practices ( Wellcome Trust, 2020 ).

‘Decolonizing global health’ movements are emerging in the universities of the ‘Global North’—led by a low- and middle-income country (LMIC) diaspora—exploring ways to overcome colonial legacies in terms of research, representation and funding processes ( Lawrence and Hirsch, 2020 ). While decolonizing global health research has largely focused on addressing power inequities between the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’ (itself a reflection of a colonial mind set), it is also important for the decolonization discourse to engage with how power asymmetries within countries in the ‘Global South’ are perpetuated in academia ( Sabharwal et al. , 2020 ; Contractor and Dasgupta, 2022 ). Furthermore, additional intersectional dimensions of power and privilege, oppression and disadvantage require consideration should we wish to link our research to broader imperatives of justice. In practice, this means challenging and upending deep-rooted power hierarchies ( Abimbola and Pai, 2020 ), including using a structural intersectionality lens to identify those hierarchies ( Homan et al. , 2021 ; Scottish Government, 2022 ).

Nesting our intent of embedding equitable practices and partnerships in the research process in these broader debates as part of an ongoing reflexive process at our institution, we at The George Institute for Global Health are currently in an institutional (re)design process, as part of which we are seeking to incorporate principles of equity and justice more consciously into our standard operating procedures. We developed a tool named ‘8Quity’ for researchers in our Institute to assess equity integration in their research projects. We supported the application of the 8Quity toolkit by our Institutional staff to retrospectively review and assess select research projects across the Institute to explore ways to increase equity in our research practices. This paper presents a snapshot of the tool and its findings, while making the larger argument that there are at least eight ways—or domains—through which equity may be integrated within health research. The following sections describe and define these domains, outline what they imply for research and also indicate resources that may assist researchers with increasing their equity orientation in each domain.

The eight domains of 8Quity

The development of the 8Quity heuristic was based on a review of the literature and a series of internal organizational and external conversations (involving research administrators and researchers) to arrive at key domains coinciding with the typical stages of research in the research endeavour (see  Figure 1 ). We tested this heuristic by subdividing each domain into self-reflection questions in the form of a diagnostic tool administered as a REDCap survey which could be self-administered or filled out through interaction with the lead co-author. Through a combination of categorical, scored questions and self-reflection open-ended questions, researchers went through a process of assessing a specific project’s equity orientation. This was piloted with 37 projects (of 35 researchers) over a 6-month period. Overall, it was observed that the average self-assigned scoring of equity orientation that participants reported was higher than what the average score for the project was, once the eight domains were averaged. This suggests that researchers may feel like they are integrating equity but are sometimes falling short of looking at all the relevant considerations (see Supplementary File 1 ). Based on the diagnostic, 8Quity expanded its scope to include a living repository of tools and resources (currently in development) to address each of the domains.

Eight domain areas of 8Quity and how to integrate equity in research

From a ‘how to’ perspective, we felt that it was useful for all health researchers, including scholars in the Health Policy and Systems Research space, to consider these domains and thus identified specific articles that help with executing the ‘how’ of each domain (see  Table 1 ). We have framed the content of these domain areas with an aim to provoke reflections among researchers on foundational questions around embedding equity in the research process. The underlying premise we have followed is that substantive integration of equity in the research process is possible by encouraging incremental changes that start with individually and collectively questioning, discussing and acting on the drivers of inequity.

Table 1.

Selected references related to 8Quity and improving equity orientation of research

The first domain looks at diversity of the research team in terms of representation of researchers with a range of markers of differentiation/disadvantage: geographic; sexual orientation, gender identity and expression; religion; caste; indigenous; ethnic or other background; caring needs and responsibilities; career stage; lived experience and disciplinary background/training. The proposition is that equitable research would be conducted by teams that are proactively designed to be diverse, inclusive, and where possible, to reflect the population being represented in or potentially affected by the research. A caveat here is that such representation may not always ensure accountability of the team member towards addressing the concerns of the community that the latter represents (or if that is even possible). However, we premise the content of this domain by taking the position that advancing substantive representation as part of team diversity begins by addressing diversity in the team composition based on the aforementioned socio-cultural dimensions as relevant in different contexts. Pratt et al . (2020) and Asmal et al . (2022) provide guidance on how to assess research team composition—from a diversity, equity and inclusivity (DEI) perspective, while also having line of sight on the barriers and challenges that may arise in achieving this.

Domain Two looks at the plurality of perspectives reflected in the conduct of the research—that is in relation to how people’s agency guides and informs the research topic, questions and scope—specifically drawing on people from socially and culturally diverse backgrounds and communities that face historical disadvantage or are underserved. Equitable research necessarily seeks to understand, engage with—and ideally directly voice—the perspectives of those facing disadvantage in identifying their perceived problems and solutions to those problems. Ward et al . (2018) and Pratt ( 2021a ; 2021b ) outline processes of developing power-sharing for research priority setting and indicators from the field of community-based participatory research that may be adapted for other projects to help ensure a range of voices in the conduct of research. This shapes the research question itself, while the actual conduct of research is covered in Domain Four.

Domain Three considers the broader structures or context within which the project is nested. Equitable research engages with context as part of its design, by using multiple forms of data collection, gathering information and views on power and political dynamics, social structures and the like and using epistemological approaches that challenge ‘business as usual’ (homogenizing) analyses (such as intergenerational, planetary or justice-based approaches). The references we have included ( Srinivasan and Williams, 2014 ; Peterson et al. , 2021 ; Pratt et al. , 2022 ) draw on principles of participatory research and a larger science and justice-based framework that explore systemic and structural determinants that influence health. Having line of sight on these, and also a sense of the approaches authors use to arrive at them, can help researchers tackle this domain in their work.

Domain Four considers inclusion of perspectives of people from socially and culturally diverse backgrounds and communities that face historical disadvantage or are underserved, in project design, roll out and governance. Equitable research seeks to engage individuals from disadvantaged groups as community researchers, in research design and development of intervention, in advisory groups and in negotiating data ownership and sovereignty. A number of sources offer concrete steps for health intervention design and attributes of meaningful partnerships that are integral to equity-oriented governance of research ( Larkan et al. , 2016 ; Public Health Agency of Canada, 2022 ).

Domain Five puts emphasis on capacity needs assessments followed by capacity strengthening of the project team, research partners and other stakeholders (e.g. people possibly affected by the research and/or in a position to apply or scale or block its findings in or beyond the project itself—be they community activists or bureaucrats) ( Kent et al. , 2012 ) in understanding and operationalizing concepts of equity, human rights, gender equality and such similar concepts that are critical to embedding equity in research. We have included a large number of references for this domain ( Global Affairs Canada, 2015 ; Castillo and Harris, 2021 ; Porroche-Escudero and Popay, 2021 ; Larson et al. , 2022 ) as we have found that it is the starting point for a broader equity-orientation process that researchers, teams and institutions may wish to pursue. A number of self-reflection tools and examples of application listed in  Table 1 for this domain are intended to guide reflection on equity orientation and integration in research and research partnerships and place particular emphasis on capacity needs. Most tools emphasize global research consortia and partnerships, but the principles and actions apply to domestic/national research projects as well. We also recognize that the paradoxical nature of the term capacity strengthening, which when used arbitrarily, can incorrectly assume a knowledge deficit. We conformed to using terminologies familiar to the principal investigators (PIs) to ensure comprehensibility of the survey questions while they engaged critically with concerns proposed in the survey questions.

Domain Six involves framing the research as being action oriented, i.e. whether the research is advocating, exploring and/or testing interventions to reduce inequities and/or promoting social justice. Conducting research that leads to action is integral for it to be equitable—effective progress towards health equity requires that research engages with evidence and systems to promote ‘socio-political restructuring’ needed to address deeply rooted inequities ( Plamondon et al. , 2019 ). An important facet of this domain is whether researchers consider a range of actors, talents and potentially related like-minded networks that could drive action on the findings of the research to advance equity beliefs and values. For example, the Advocacy Coalition Framework ( Sabatier, 1988 ) offers a useful lens to consider the aforementioned and encourage researchers to leverage their positions and access to networks to use research findings within and beyond the systems that they are studying and engaging with—particularly to ensure more equity-oriented policy ( Brooks, 2018 ; Okeke et al. , 2021 ). Beyond the literature on advocacy coalitions, some of the resources we thought that were helpful ( Reid et al. , 2017 ; Jull et al. , 2018 ) place emphasis on indigenous health partnerships and collaborations that have foregrounded indigenous knowledge, while also increasing responsiveness of research to communities themselves. A great many lessons apply beyond indigenous/First Nations contexts.

Domain Seven is concerned with analysis by gender and other dimensions of inequality. Thus, according to the 8Quity tool, this domain could involve using the PROGRESS+ lens ( Evans and Brown, 2003 ), strengths-based approaches ( Weick et al. , 1989 ; Hutchinson, 2019 ) and a review of or contribution to analysis by study participants and partners themselves. The literature supporting these concepts also include the studies by Mbuagbaw et al . (2017) , Fogarty et al . (2018) and ( Askew et al . 2020 ), among others. PROGRESS+ has some limitations but has been valuable in demonstrating how we may ensure that capacity-strengthening approaches move from deficit-based considerations to strength-based ones, informed not presumptively, but instead via meaningful collaboration with the priority population to ascertain where their strengths lie ( Askew et al . 2020 ). This tool supports researchers to shift their frames of reference from conceptualizing and naming groups as ‘vulnerable’ or ‘backward’ or focusing only on disadvantage, to instead reflecting the totality of experiences, the forms of agency, sovereignty, solidarity and strength communities possess as well.

Domain Eight covers plans for benefit to those involved in the research and the public beyond the project duration. This involves offering support with outputs such as proposal writing, resources, referral, campaigns, policymaker engagement and feedback for project participants and the broader public. This lens also looks at whether support is available for open access publications. Our recommended literature ( Plamondon and Bisung, 2019 ; Ismail et al., 2020 ) focuses on knowledge translation and practices such as benefit sharing that can ensure that participants in research studies also benefit from the endeavour and that partnerships can have enduring value.

The references listed in  Table 1 were part of an existing library informally created and expanded by authors with inputs from internal and external collaborators and used for course development on research methods and trainings on gender, equity and rights mainstreaming. This was supplemented by using ad-hoc keyword searches on PubMed and Google Scholar to yield literature specifically focused on concepts outlined in the eight domains of 8Quity. A series of presentations and discussions were held at our Institute both formal and informal, in the course of which additional recommendations were solicited and added. Furthermore, in July 2021, across many sessions of an internal strategic and research forum, more resources were identified and crowd-sourced. In order to complete this publication, and as the 8Quity model itself evolved and advanced, additional searches have been carried out using targeted keywords that correspond to the 8Quity domains.

This list of references in  Table 1 is not exhaustive as we are discovering and as the literature continues to grow. It bears mentioning that while the principles reflected in the domains continue to be prioritized in our work, some of the framing of domains has changed to remove overlap and refine our approach to the research. An updated version of 8Quity therefore, the basis for our latest and growing inventory, is available as Supplementary File 1 .

Implementation considerations for uptake of 8Quity’s dimensions in research

It is important to not overstate the role that individual researchers or even institutions can play in increasing the equity orientation of research. We acknowledge that even if 8Quity is implemented to its fullest extent, inequities and injustices will remain. This is evident from initial considerations in relation to Domain One, where including a diverse research team can be stifled by gross inequities in access to research as a career for certain population subgroups. It is very common for populations that are highly represented as a participant group in research to be starkly under-represented in the researcher group for the same area. Inequities and injustices that shape such realities are beyond the remit of individual or even consortia of researchers to remedy or repair over the period of a project, a series of projects or even careers. However, progress can and should start with researchers understanding the role they can play and what supportive institutional and public policies are required and that they ought to advocate for. Indeed, the question of individual agency and structural constraints came up in our pilot. In the open-ended component of the 8Quity diagnostic, researchers shared why it was challenging for them to operationalize the equity dimensions proposed by 8Quity in their work. We summarize some of these reflections in this section to aid researchers to overcome similar challenges as they design projects.

Funding constraints were brought to the fore by many PIs as a barrier in setting up patient/consumer/affected community advisory groups and in creating research translation outputs. Funding was cited as available to deliver only ‘mainstream approaches’ and limited (or not available) for capacity-strengthening activities as prioritized in 8Quity. There remains a need to intervene upon ‘the larger ecosystem’ of research to enable fulfilment of this and other equity prerequisites. Some moves in this direction are visible, for instance the range of tools provided by the National Institutes of Health Research of the UK, on community engagement and involvement ( Nelson, 2019 ; Nelson et al. , 2021a , b ).

Researchers raised the challenge of assessing and ensuring diversity because, in their words, ‘diversity’ is ‘hard to articulate’. Moreover, some personal identifiers may be considered private (e.g. gender and sexual orientation of team members). Overcoming this challenge likely requires ‘institutional investment and orientation’ that supports and creates norms around diversity within research teams, across partners and more. A great deal of research literature on partnerships covers this; we have referenced some of the literature earlier.

Finally, some of the practice of equity is about ‘personal transformation and learning’. Unfamiliarity with equity-based research methods among some researchers (one participant specified ‘biomedical researchers’, but this would likely apply to others as well) was considered a constraint to incorporating equity. Participants indicated that the 8Quity concepts are not familiar and some of them expressed interest in learning more about equity. Many of the above-mentioned tools/resources are intended to enable self-reflection at the individual level, as we see that as a key locus of transformation and re-orientation (creating the basis for these individuals to call for changes to the structural constraints to equity).

The work on 8Quity continues: not only have we refined the tool (see Supplementary File 2 ) but we have also now expanded the ambit of this work and are now developing a full-fledged toolkit, documentation of case studies and development of course and training material for equity integration in research. We are well aware, furthermore, that equity integration is far from a technical or operational process. It is a political endeavour in that it confronts existing hierarchies and power imbalances. Challenging prevailing thinking, practice and funding modalities will require political mobilization and advocacy. It would appear strategic to link such efforts to wider efforts to redress power imbalances and inequities globally and involves advocating within and beyond academia. We have conceived of some of these linkages in several domains of 8Quity (related to the team, to proposition, even to capacity), as researchers need to be guided in this process, to learn and where possible adopt advocacy strategies in their daily work. There is also advocacy to be done within and beyond our institutions, with donors, research managers, institutional boards (that govern research, ethics and even individual studies or programmes of work), students, scholars and collaborators. At our Institute, we are having a larger conversation about justice, equity and dignity across our offices and with our partners and the communities with whom we interact. We are trying to create safe spaces where conversations can take place and where change can be supported for teams and various types of actors. This will take multiple careers worth of time; we anticipate some intransigence and many, very difficult conversations. However, these conversations must start. As Eleanor Roosevelt has said, human rights begin at home—we feel that equity in research must begin with an individual and institutional reflexive process that then has the possibility of making ripples at larger scales.

This 8Quity diagnostic has been presented internally in our Institute but with the involvement of external scholars working on research equity and ethics. We are sharing this inventory of tools that help more with the ‘how’ of each domain. The toolkit is a ‘living’ resource, and we are keen to expand this further and continue the critical conversations needed to increase the equity, ethics, justice and accountability orientation of research.

The equity-in-research journey is long, and we are looking for company of other people and institutions as we tread this path. We also acknowledge that simple tools like 8Quity may be helpful, even necessary, but are insufficient for the broader societal change required to address equity. However, with our intentions firmly set, and our accountabilities, in place, we researchers can play a role, however modest, in turning the tide of the injustices that leave some of us behind.

Supplementary Material

Czad010_supp, acknowledgements.

We are grateful for insights provided by Ania Anderst, Adithya Pradhyumna, Rahul Amruthapuri and Keziah Bennett-Brook on the 8Quity tool and its pilot. This work benefited from contributions of B.R. Rajeev, Maoyi Tian, Benson Shangzhi Xiong and Athena Ting Wei. We also received helpful feedback on 8Quity from Bridget Pratt, Kate Hunter, Tanya Seshadri and N.S. Prashanth as well as equity-related resources from Tristan Bouckley.

Contributor Information

Misimi Kakoti, The George Institute for Global Health, 308, Third Floor, Elegance Tower, Plot No. 8, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi 110025, India.

Devaki Nambiar, The George Institute for Global Health, 308, Third Floor, Elegance Tower, Plot No. 8, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi 110025, India. Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Australia. Prasanna School of Public Health, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka 576104, India.

Amy Bestman, The George Institute for Global Health, Level 5, 1 King Street, Newtown, NSW 2042, Australia.

Damian Garozzo-Vaglio, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Australia.

Kent Buse, The George Institute for Global Health, Imperial College London, 84 Wood Lane, London, W12 0BZ, UK.

Supplementary data

Supplementary data is available at Health Policy and Planning online.

Data availability

This work was supported by internal funds of the George Institute for Global Health.

Author contributions

D.N. and M.K.contributed to conception or design of the work. M.K. and D.N. contributed to data collection. D.N. and M.K. contributed to data analysis and interpretation. M.K., D.N. and D.G.-V. contributed to drafting the article. K.B. and A.B. contributed to critical revision of the article. M.K., D.N., A.B., D.G.-V. and K.B. contributed to final approval of the version to be submitted.

Reflexivity statement

Three (M.K., D.N. and A.B.) of the four co-authors for this paper are women. M.K. and D.N. are from and based out of India. M.K. is an early career researcher in the field of health systems and equity in India, and D.N. has been involved in research in health equity and social determinants of health in India and several LMICs for close to two decades now. A.B. and K.B. are based out of Australia and the UK, respectively. A.B. is an early career researcher with health equity as focus of her research. D.G.-V. is an early career public health practitioner working in mental health and suicide prevention in North Queensland, Australia. K.B. has been working on issues of health equity for more than three decades across several LMICs focussing on power and politics in health policy processes.

Ethical approval

We received ethical approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee of the George Institute for Global Health India. Reference No. 10/2021.

Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

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Health, Education, & Justice Equity Research

RTI is committed to centering equity in our values as researchers, in the process of conducting research, and in the outcomes of our research. This requires acknowledging, addressing, and dismantling systemic biases in mindsets, practices, and policies.

In line with this commitment, we feature RTI Press publications that focus on health, education, and justice equity. These Open Access, peer-reviewed publications address a broad range of topics, including research methodology, social determinants of health, culturally informed community engagement, environmental justice, and educational partnerships. Taken together, these publications reflect multiple ways that RTI investigators examine equity. For related work, see RTI's  Transformative Research Unit for Equity (TRUE) .

RTI Press Publications

Trauma-informed approaches and community engagement

The impact of police violence on communities

To whom it may affirm

Girls have academic advantages and so do boys

Bringing an equity-centered framework to research

Social determinants of health

Culturally informed community engagement

Artificially intelligent social risk adjustment

Parent Teacher Home Visits

The need for a diverse environmental justice workforce

A global call to action for gender-inclusive data collection and use

Environmental justice concerns and the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline route in North Carolina

Racial and ethnic disparities among individuals with Alzheimer’s disease in the United States

Justine Allpress

Research geospatial scientist.

Senior Vice President, Health Practice Area

Wanda Bodnar

Research natural scientist.

Research Public Health Analyst

Jessica Cance

Senior research public health analyst.

Rajeev Colaço

Merla (monitoring, evaluation, research, learning, and adapting) director.

Megan Comfort

Senior fellow.

Jay Feldman

Senior researcher, education and equity.

Reshan Fernando

Senior research chemist.

James Harrington

Research chemist, fellow.

Stephanie Hawkins

Vice president, transformative research unit for equity (true).

Senior Research Scientist

Jamie L. Humphrey

Vicki Johnson-Lawrence

Heather Kane

Program director, child & adolescent research and evaluation program.

Jennifer Laird

Senior manager, education research.

Keith E. Levine

Vice president, center for analytical sciences.

Megan A. Lewis

Senior fellow, patient & family engagement research.

Lisa M. Lines

Senior health services researcher.

Vincenzo Malo

Public health analyst.

Katherine McKnight

Senior manager, education research.

Daniela Pineda

Senior director, center for equity and social justice research.

Tamara Terry

Director of academic research engagement and equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging community outreach chair.

Nitya Venkateswaran

Senior manager, equity capacity building hub.

Jason Williams

Robert H. Beach

Rti fellow, agricultural, resource & energy economics and policy program.

RTI Press is a U.S. registered trademark of Research Triangle Institute.

247 Equality Topics & Essay Examples

Looking for exciting equality topics to write about? The issue is hot, controversial, and definitely worth studying!

🔝 Top 10 Gender Equality Essay Topics

• 🏆 Best Essay Examples

🥇 Most Interesting Equality Topics to Write about

🎓 simple & easy equality essay titles.

• 📝 Interesting Titles
• 💡 Controversial Topics

❓ Equality Essay Questions

In your equality essay, you might want to focus on racial, social, or gender inequality in historical perspective or nowadays. Whether you will choose to write an argumentative or persuasive essay, this article will help you. We’ve gathered top race and gender equality title ideas and added excellent equality essay examples to inspire you even more.

• Gender equality as a fundamental human right
• History of women’s empowerment
• Preventing violence against women and girls
• Gender bias in medical sphere
• Reproductive rights of women
• Child marriage in developing countries
• Gender equality in economy: is it possible?
• Gender stereotypes in the workplace
• Women representation in political institution
• Gender quotas in parliaments: do they work?

🏆 Best Equality Essay Examples & Topic

• Equality, Diversity and Inclusive Education The major goal of inclusive learning is to value the diversity of the human community and also ensure that there is equity in the provision of education to all groups of people, such that not […]
• Freedom and equality According to Liliuokalani of Hawaii, the conquest contravened the basic rights and freedoms of the natives and their constitution by undermining the power of their local leaders.
• Employment Relations: Effects of Unitarism on Inequality In view of this, management teams are evaluating employee loyalty on the basis of the extent to which they have internalized the firm’s corporate vision even if it is at the expense of their personal […]
• Does Democracy Require Equality of Income or Wealth? While wealth equality as the presence of equivalent opportunities to exert political power appears to be the essential factor in establishing democracy, income equality as the opportunity to build wealth is also a factor.
• Missouri Compromise: Economic Equality Among American States These impacts include enhancing economic equality, political balance, unity of the northern and southern states of America, and controlling the spread of slavery in the country. Finally, the Missouri Compromise controlled the spread and prevalence […]
• Inequality in Society: Conflict and Functionalism Theories Functionalism theory views inequality as unavoidable and important to the society while conflict theory considers inequality to result from conflict and coercion in the social system.
• Multinational Corporations Managing Diversity & Equality The supposed acceptances of diversity as a good contradict the well-established structural barrier to implementing greater openness to differences in the workplaces.
• Absolute Gender Equality in a Marriage Despite the fact that the principles of gender equality in marriage will clearly affect not only the relationships between a husband and a wife but also the roles of the spouses considerably, it is bound […]
• Sociological perspectives of Gender Inequality The events taking place in the modern world and the occurrence of the feminist movements during the past few decades can be used to offer a deeper understanding on the subject of gender inequality and […]
• Gender and Sports: Men and Women Equality Sport is considered to be one of the most appealing but at the same time the most controversial institutions in the world.
• Gender-Sensitive Education and Equality This is because they are in the best position to determine the level of success that has been achieved, and what could be impeding the achievement of this equality.
• Gender Equality and Title IX The function of Title IX is to guarantee gender equality in college sports and it has supported the development of female sports.
• SDGs – Equality Education and Gender Equality The quality of education for girls can affect their employment and their ability to support themselves financially. With a good education, women have a larger range of jobs to choose from and the opportunity to […]
• The Progress of Gender Equality The key achievements have been the removal of all forms of discrimination against women, the promotion of legal literacy, education, and the general protection of the rights of women.
• “The Struggle for Black Equality: 1954-1992” by Harvard Sitkoff The author discusses the belittling of black people and the preservation of white supremacy, describes how black citizens’ inability to vote escalated into them being assaulted and murdered, and explains how law facilitated racial barriers.
• Gender Issues of Equality and Representation in the K-12 Education System This paper examines the gender issues of equality and representation in the K-12 education system and gives out the major findings based on the observed trends from the structured study of literature in the area.
• Social Equality and Economic Growth Social equality provides individuals with equal opportunities to contribute to the growth of the economy. Equality also ensures that the potential of the society is fully exploited to enhance the development of the entire community.
• Social, Cultural and Gender Inequality From a Global Perspective It is the duty of the tutor to craft a lecture-room environment that serves to enhance meaningful discussions concerning gender. This is due to the fact that students learn best in various ways.
• Aspects of Equality for Transgender Athletes The authors of the article claim that transgender athletes deserve equal representation and the right to participate in competitions in the divisions of the gender they identify themselves by referring to social structures and justice.
• Inequality and Development The irritating consumerism of the rich and the shortage of basic needs in low income societies lead to the multiplication of conflicts between the rich and poor.
• Gender inequality in Canada According to, although it is certain that men and women have actual differences particularly physically, most of the social indifference perception are not because of the biological connotation but because of the over time cultural […]
• Relation Between Justice and Inequality The structure of institutions needs to be changed in that everyone can relate hence creating a rift in the judgment delivered between the rich and the poor is unproductive.
• Disability Equality of a Disabled Lone Parent Although the officials were initially reluctant owing to her physical condition and the nature of work she was to perform, they allowed her to try.
• Empowering Gender Equality in the United Arab Emirates Workforce The objective of the paper is to track changes in gender equality policies, especially concerning the equal representation of all women in the country’s workforce.
• Gender Inequality in Workplace Gender is the main reason for inequalities in the workplace; this is because nowadays there is a steady increase in the number of women in workplaces in the world.
• Coretta Scott King: Fighting and Advocating for Equality Coretta was exposed to the social injustices when she was a very young girl where she was forced to face the wrath of a segregated society, that is, the society where the native and the […]
• Equality and Diversity in Business Ethics The leader will identify the skills and dexterities of the workers and design the best teams that can deliver the targeted goals.
• Fairness and Equality in the Modern Business World The reduction in the gender wage gap between men and women in the workplace indicates the progress that society has made in making the world a fairer and equal place.
• The Telus Company’s Equality and Diversity Practices In order to be a prominent representative in the framework of equality and inclusion, the corporation admits the importance of ensuring that its staff, at all levels, demonstrates the variety of customers and communities.
• The Philosophy of Equality and Inclusiveness: Key Principles For example, inclusiveness reinforces the understanding of a person with disabilities that one is entitled to the same services as the rest.
• Freedom, Equality & Solidarity by Lucy Parsons In the lecture and article ‘The Principles of Anarchism’ she outlines her vision of Anarchy as the answer to the labor question and how powerful governments and companies worked for hand in hand to stifle […]
• Gender Equality and Development Despite the progress of the last century on ensuring the equal rights for both genders, there are still issues that have to be addressed by the global society.
• The Struggle for Gender Equality Before going any further it is crucial to emphasize the pitfalls when it comes to asserting the rights of women when it comes to the need for similar treatment in comparison to men.
• Hobbes and Locke on the Issue of Equality The concept of equality is significant in the discussion of liberty, property, and the role of government in the lives of people.
• Equality of Opportunity in Society Policies developed by the political class to pursue equality of opportunity distract society from addressing the issues that contribute to the inequalities, depriving people of good life regardless of their social class.
• Equality of Transgender and LGBTQ+ Populations The principles of the struggle for the transgender and LGBTQ+ populations should include respect for the choice and self-identification of a person.
• The Discussion of Concepts of Gender Equality In the article, the author presents such concepts as violence, harm, empowerment, freedom, and universal care from the point of view of capitalism, liberalism, and feminism to reach the point of gender equality.
• How to Have Both Private Property and Equality in a State It is possible to have both private property and equality in a state by developing measurable notions through a qualitative analysis of freedom and equality in their relatable aspect.
• Gender Equality in Children’s Perception Despite the variety of achievements made on the subject in different parts of the world, the general tendency leads society toward accepting the idea of equality between men and women.
• Fairness and Equality in the Modern Labor World The establishment of an equal position between people is one of the most critical forces that will help the organic and stable development of society and the surrounding world.
• Workplace Equality for Minorities Steps must be taken to ensure that labor is appropriately paid and that the current model, in which work performed predominantly by minorities is undervalued, is not perpetuated.
• Panel: Gender Equality and Egalitarian Society There are various views on gender inequality among modern scholars. While some connect gender inequality with the development of material property and the domination of males, others find examples of nations with no signs of gender inequality. Graeber and Wengrow (2021) write that there were no periods in human history when people lived in a […]
• Racial Equality in the Brown v Board of Education Case The Brown v Board of Education of Topeka was one of the events that resulted in a step towards demolishing inequality, being preceded by an unfair ruling.
• Income Equality and Social Policy Advocacy Lag The lag in income equality can be seen from statistical data: the income inequality ratio in the US is nine to one, which is worse than in Portugal, the UK, France, Canada, Germany, and some […]
• The Global Goal of Gender Equality in Healthcare The problem of gender equality is one of the most vital issues which should be adequately addressed in our society. One of the major problems is the gender disparities in the health and social care […]
• The Meaning of Equity: The Struggle for Equality However, there is a significant difference between equality and equity, and in my opinion, the latter approach is much fairer and provides more benefits. Therefore, for me, equity is the idea that both society and […]
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Address on Equality and Rights The same rights enable both a man and a woman to be part of enhancing the growth and development of a nation. The women would acquire their rights by using their penmanship, words, wealth, influence, […]
• Equality of Victims in the Legal System One of the most problematic issues concerning the inefficiencies of the legal system is the relatively low investigation rate of specific murder cases.
• Activists’ Role in African Americans’ Struggle for Equality The civil rights movement became one of the most notable phenomena in the history of the United States because it forever changed the political, legal, and social landscape of the country.
• Women’s Equality Regarding Their Overall Wellness According to Poczatkova and Kribikova, the underrepresentation of women, particularly in the fields of science and research, is reproduced in the outcomes of the findings of studies and the subsequent applicability.
• Title IX: Gender Equality in Education Education provides opportunities for developing the abilities of girls and boys, women and men to participate in the social, economic, and political life of the state and is the basis for the development of a […]
• Gender Equality as Target of Social Work As far as health care is concerned, the primary issue of gender inequality addresses the issue of access to the services and the quality of care provided.
• Cultural Diversity and Social Equality The power of equality is to allow one to express their cultural identity without the fear of being marginalized in society.
• Same-Sex Marriages and Equality Some oppose gay marriage on religious grounds and others- on an individual or group basis, but some tussle against the inequitable portrayal of gay marriage with zeal, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein.
• Enhancing Equality in the Society Since equality is at the heart of human rights, the government should contribute to its growth by lawfully establishing the same rights for every person regardless of their SES, age, race, and other features.
• Nursing Regulations as to Patient Equality I did not know that he was the father of the senior director at the hospital, and the older man was waiting for him. The incident was the subject of discussion in the workplace, and […]
• Martin Luther King Jr. as an Equality Activist At one time, Martin doubted which profession to give preference to medicine or law, everything was decided in favor of the ministry of the church, which influenced the education and literacy of the future leader.
• Naomi Osaka’s Case of Gender Equality in Sports The recent case of retirement by Naomi Osaka is a prime example of how gender roles and racism in sports can affect even the best athletes making sports an important discussion in the context of […]
• The Fighter for Equality: Nelson Mandela In 1941, he moved to Johannesburg, and, along with his work as a lawyer, he entered the University of the Witwatersrand at the Faculty of Law. He organized the Campaign of Disobedience to the Authorities, […]
• How Faith Leaders Are Divided Over Equality Act The Vatican refuses to bless same-sex marriages saying that this is not in accordance with the canons of the Roman Catholic Church since marriage is a union of a man and a woman.
• Modern Society’s Influence on Behavior and Equality Autonomy has enabled women to engage in political and economic fields that were prohibited in the traditional society, translating to equity and equality.
• Creating a Culture of Gender Equality in the Workplace This proposal will consider the existing gender inequality within the field of architecture and propose several changes an architecture firm should undertake to create a culture of gender equality.
• Promoting Equality in the UK Primary School Education System What is the nature of the relationship between inequalities in the UK primary school education system and its administrative structures? The context of this research is the primary school education system in the UK.
• Is Political and Racial Equality Possible in American Society? The study of this issue is important to modern American politics as it directly reflects the problems and opportunities of racial and ethnic minorities. It is also important to strive for justice and equality in […]
• Populism Discourse and Social Equality Regarding the definition, in this paper, populism will be viewed as “an appeal to “the people” against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of the society”.
• Impairment Pain Management and Disability Equality The purpose of the policy is to examine approaches to pain management to ensure disability equality. The first method is a formalized approach to pain management, assessment, and frequent reassessment/ monitoring of the patient’s state.
• Gender Equality: Definition, Challenges Over the decades, society viewed the female gender as an inferior sect in the community hence the emergent issues of imbalance in the system.
• Abolition vs. Equality in the American Civil War The Resolution was signed by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States who believed the annihilation of slavery and preserving the Union to be the core targets of the war.
• Workplace Relations and Equality Policymaking It is agreeable that many employees have expressed their concerns due to the increasing cases of inequality, discrimination, and abuse in the workplace. The problem of inequality and discrimination at the workplace continues to affect […]
• Women in Islam: Some Rights, No Equality Notwithstanding the principles of equality of men and women in Islamic tradition, women’s low status should be attributed not to the ideals set in the Quran but to the cultural norms of the patriarchal society.
• Female Criminality and Gender Equality The present paper considers this theory by exploring the differences in treatment of females in the United States and Nigeria and assessing their impact on female criminality in the two countries.
• Diversity and Equality at Business Management Level The analysis was carried out in 2010 and revealed that 40% of all company directors in the UK were foreign. When compared to 2005, this represents a 14% increase in the number of overseas directors […]
• Deaf Culture and Sign Language: Social Equality in Society Most importantly, the ASL Level 1 course has facilitated an accurate understanding and respect of the Deaf culture as a means of enhancing social equality in diverse societies. Most importantly, ASL Level 1 has been […]
• Media and ICT Industries Gender Equality Initiatives Therefore, the inability to use media and social networks to build a business is a serious obstacle to the development of women’s entrepreneurship in less developed countries.
• Syrian Conflict and Women Rights: Way to Equality or Another Discrimination The main reason for a low percentage of women in the workforce is Syrian social norms, which stereotypically reflect the role of women in homes serving their husbands and in the private sector.
• Financing Public Education: The Concept of Equality It is also critical to reach impartiality for everyone around the country to have equal opportunities to build their future with the help of education.
• Gender Equality in Finland and the U.S. Legal Situation: discuss the laws regarding general gender equality and the representation of women in positions of political power. Political Situation: analyze the current political landscape in the United States as well as Finland and […]
• Negative Impact of Oil on Wealth Equality and Economy of United Arab Emirates Oil has created wealth inequality in UAE and a shift in world energy focus to green energy will negatively impact the economy of UAE.
• The Women’s Movement and Gender Equality: ERA Opponents of the ERA argue that it is redundant due to the already existing Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
• Gender Equality in Higher Education: The Underrepresentation of Women in Educational Leadership A prime example of gender inequality is the underrepresentation of women in educational leadership, and this problem is going to be considered here in detail.
• Gender Problems, Equality and Perspectives: “Glass Ceiling” Trend The word “ceiling” depicts a kind of barrier for the progress of women and the word “glass” is used as an adjective for ceiling because as glass in invisible, the barrier is also invisible. The […]
• Private Clubs and Gender Equality In the clubs, members of the society get opportunity to pursue their goals and interests collectively and for the benefit of all.
• Affirmative Action Advances Racial Equality by Glenn and Williams The opponents of affirmative action, on the other hand, argue that affirmative action penalizes innocent people simply because they are white, and in most cases, the result is that it leads to people who are […]
• Black Women and the Struggle for Equality The rates in which the black females are incarcerated by males vary based on the level of education that the women have, and also the level of civilization that the Africa women are in.
• Is FGM a Human Rights Issue in the Development of Humanism and Equality? Among the problems faced by developed states that receive migrants from third-world countries, the protection of women’s and girls’ rights in the field of reproductive health stands out.
• Equality in the UN Operations: Chinese Perspective During the Cold, War China felt that the instrument of peacekeeping operations was exploited as a tool by the superpowers to further their interests and not the interests of the nations involved.
• Order, Freedom, Equality, & Justice In order to include all the necessary points into the new constitution it is advisable that the already existing constitutions of the developed countries are consulted and the works of the reputable scholars in the […]
• Welfare and Equality: Richard Titmuss’ Theories According to Titmuss, the realities of 20th century’s living in Western countries were defined by the fact that, unlike what it used to be the case, during course of earlier centuries, the amount of socially […]
• Equality vs. Prejudice in American Society To say more, people do not mind in today’s American society the values of humane attitude toward each other without mentioning the differences in ethnical or cultural diversity.’Melting pot’ of today leaves much to be […]
• Social Factors in the US History: Respect for Human Rights, Racial Equality, and Religious Freedom The very first years of the existence of the country were marked by the initiatives of people to provide as much freedom in all aspects of social life as possible.
• Comparison of the Opportunity Educational Equality Pedestal on the Two Schools Carroll High Schools has been selected to receive an award for the continuing efforts of the Character Education Discipline Committee from the Character Education Partnership.
• Political Economy: An Examination of Equality of Income Distribution In the ACLP database, the criterion variable for the inequality of income distribution is the Gini ratio. The mode is to the right of the mean and median.
• Equality or Priority in the Ideal of Equality Before attempt to answer this question, it is necessary to discuss the definition of the doctrine of egalitarianism, prioritarianism and the purpose of this doctrine.
• In Pursuit of Educational Equality Images of spaciousness and majesty, of endless plains and soaring mountains, fill our folklore and our music and the anthems that our children sing.”This land is your land,” they are told; and, in one of […]
• Differences in the Conception of Equality in Education This ideology has been perceived as the opposite of equality of results but it is not easy to distinguish between results and opportunities.
• Equality of Opportunity and Social Justice: Affirmative Action If this is the situation in advanced nations of the world, the plight in the newly emerging states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America can easily be imagined as to how difficult would it be […]
• Women in Developing Countries: Globalization, Liberalization, and Gender Equality Owing to issues of gender, the voices of women in developing countries are never heard when it comes to the creation of trade agreements and policies or in their negotiations.
• Gender Equality Question: “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare For the past few centuries, the rise of various movements have marked a certain change in the ideas and philosophies of man regarding the true nature of his existence, the pronounced inequalities of not only […]
• Equality Within the Workforce Issues One of the most profound social issues within the realm of employment has to be that of equality within the workforce.
• Equality: The Use of TV to Develop Our Gender Roles In this sense, when it is the men who predominantly work outside of the home, they will usually see the home as a place of leisure and so use the TV as a source of […]
• Feminism and Support of Gender Equality Nowadays, it involves advocacy and a set of activities aimed to protect the rights of a plethora of discriminated groups, including LGBT community members and racial minorities.
• Gender Equality in Sweden and America The parental leave is extended to fathers, and the government strives to maintain a fair gender proportion in the top positions in public agencies.
• Criminology. Female Incarceration and Equality The power dynamics between the two genders and the observable differences in male and female behavior shape their crime patterns, avenues into the justice system, and responses to incarceration.
• Equality: Benefits of Showing Real Differences The purpose of this paper is to apply the concept of equality to explain why people should strive to reveal and show that there are real human differences instead of surmising that they exist.
• The Enlightenment: Giving Start to Equality The ideas inherent to the philosophy of the Enlightenment changed the course of history and gave rise to the French Revolution and the start of the Constitution of the United States, human rights, and the […]
• Appiah’s Ideas of Racism, Equality, and Justice The existence of visible differences in people’s appearances created the basis for the distribution of populations into groups depending on the color of their skin and some other features.
• J. S. Murray’s “On the Equality of the Sexes” It is possible to say that Murray’s ideas presented in On the Equality of the Sexes are ahead of her time.
• Chimamanda Adichie: The Issue of Equality and Tolerance After centuries of discrimination and alienation between the communities of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, after hundreds of years of wars based on religion and nationality, modern society has slowly started coming to senses and […]
• Egalitarianism and Social Equality in Cohen’s View With regards to the second part of the question, an egalitarian ethos is not needed to achieve justice, because the existence of an egalitarian ethos is not a critical ingredient in creating equality within the […]
• Empathy, Equality and Justice as Reflective Values Related to the principle of empathy is the notion of equality, which is extremely important as an addition to the ability to empathize.
• Social and Gender Equality Ideals and Theories According to Friedrich, there is no need of elevating the selfish desires of the human race in the pretext of democracy or hot pursuit for gender equality. However, the equality of outcome tends to be […]
• Gender Equality Issues in the Workplace Environment Hence, the gathering of information to validate the allegations is central to the resolution of the gender issue in the case study.
• Gender Equality: Plan to Address the Issue The vice president of administration and finance should use a powerful plan to address the issues affecting the institution. To begin with, I will use a powerful plan to address the issues affecting different female […]
• Chapters 1-2 of “Liberty, Equality, Power” by Murrin et al. The voyage resulted in Pope’s decree of the division of all non-Christian lands between Portugal and Spain, dying out of the local population of Carribean and Bahama Islands and replacing it with black slaves from […]
• Workplace Gender Equality and Discrimination Laws Gender equality in the workplace is also important to achieve competitive benefits, as well as a complex and competitive worldwide economy.
• Chapter 3 of “Liberty, Equality, Power” by Murrin et al. In the subsequent part of the chapter, the author illustrates the events of Indians’ settlement. The author claims that mercantilism ideals became the prevention of ethnic diversity support.
• Gender Equality in the Laing O’Rourke Company The construction industry in the UK has been in a steady decline for from 2011 to 2016, with its fall culminating in autumn, when Carillion, one of the largest construction company in the region, disintegrated.
• Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality Concepts According to Georgellis and Sankae, the Theory of Gender Role emerged out of the consistent work of different psychologists who were interested in explaining the differences between men and women from a socio-economic angle.
• Male Nurses and Gender Equality in the Workplace The research will go further to examine how the concept of gender equality in the nursing working environment can address the problem of the nursing shortage.
• Equality and Diversity in the United Arab Emirates The principles of equality and diversity are promoted in many modern organizations, and it is important to evaluate specific competing drivers that contribute to incorporating diversity into the strategy of the UAE-based company and discuss […]

📝 Interesting Gender Equality Title Ideas

• Democracy and Oligarchy: the Meaning of Equality Aristotle’s meaning of equality is a form of government that is democratically rooted and not aligned to the issue of state and class.
• Equality Struggle of American Minority Groups The Chinese, Hmong, and the Japanese came to the US to provide labor in places such as gold mines and rail construction among others while the rest of the Asian-Americans came as slaves.
• Gender Equality and Its Development Another important indication of the progress is the creation of UN Women, which addressed the known shortcomings of the global women’s rights movements, such as barriers to funding and lack of centralized effort aimed at […]
• Equality, Diversity and Human Rights in Healthcare Equity can be achieved in a health system that acknowledges the diversity of the population respecting the expectations and needs of the patients, the staff and the services as a whole.
• The Question of Gender Equality: Scott vs. Terrall The paper also answers the question of gender equality, in terms of the standing of women in scientific society, and explains why the arguments of both authors are valid and provide a useful insight into […]
• Educational Equality for All Students In spite of the gravity of multiculturalism in the American society, the teachers and students tend to misinterpret the concept of the intercultural environment by often regarding representatives of various ethnicities as “monocultural”.
• UAE Employee Equality in Sick Leave Provision The actual laws and regulations concerning the provision of sick leaves to the employees in the UAE will be compared to the evidential data of the realities in the modern workplaces.
• Gender and Racial Equality at the Workplace In this light, this paper seeks to identify the prevailing obstacles to the full attainment of racial and gender equality in the workplace setting.
• The Theme of People’ Equality in the United States The subject of equality of all people in the United States is stated in the American Declaration of Independence which declares that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with the […]
• LULAC: Efforts to Promote Racial Equality However, even after the official acceptance of Hispanic people as citizens with the full access to the civil rights and liberties, LULAC is still essential for the promotion of racial equality.
• Equality and Diversity: Benefits in the Workplace It is essential to understand the importance of diversity and equality in the workplace because the world is becoming more diverse and many organisations are learning to manage employees from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
• Equality and Diversity in Business Environment The employees will also present adequate competencies in order to improve the level of performance. Employees should use different approaches and ideas in order to promote the concept of diversity.
• What Is the Point of Equality Theory? The antagonism that seems to crop up from the two interpretations gives rise to the concept of egalitarianism that seeks to diminish the differences that arise from the understanding of liberty and equality.
• American Democracy and Equality Criticism However, the absence of even the smallest traces of ‘equality’ in America can be confirmed not only within the context of what accounts for the living standards, on the part of the country’s rich and […]
• Developing a Culture of Gender Equality by Awadhi The author is one of the modern and educated women in the UAE, which provides evidence of her ability to develop an article describing the state of women in the country.
• Rationalizing Equality in the USA The effects of power abuse still in the minds of the federalists and the antifederalists, both groups had a hard time to come into terms with the intended ratification and implementation of the United States […]
• Equity and Equality of Resources by R. Dworkin As a matter of fact, resolution for this problem should be measures adopted to promote and empower individuals in the society, who are the main beneficiaries of equality in resource sharing.
• Abu Dhabi Health Services Co: Equality & Diversity This will be a sign that the firm appreciates the diversity that exists at the firm and that it is keen on protecting the interests of all its employees.
• Media Influence on Gender and Equality In the recent past, the media have been condemned for compromising on the intention of realizing gender equality. With respect to the above case, the theory supports any decision or act that will result in […]
• Toleration in T. Nagel’s “Equality and Partiality” He argues that the state has the right to enforce only those rules that are based on the values accepted by all of the citizens. Nagel shows that the government should show respect to all […]
• US Education: Goals, Methods, and Equality Issues Despite the fact that nowadays, in the 21st century, honoring diversity has become an almost a common tradition, recognizing the need for diversity in education is still a controversial issue in the sphere of education.
• The Equality Ohio Interest Group The group has been active in politics as government policies affect the existence and the rights of the group. The influence that the Equality Ohio community group holds in Ohio’s politics is significant.
• Gender Equality: Women Leadership in Financial Sector The primary purpose of the study is to assess the effectiveness of various GE tools in the context of the financial sector in the US.
• Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment by Gemechu Ogato The article “The Quest for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in the least Developed Countries” presents a macro work. The ideas presented in this article will guide more societies and governments to identify better policies […]
• Men and Women Equality in the African Diaspora Although the historic and social events and changes in the USA typical for the period of the 1960s-1980s contribute to the stating the ideals of civil rights and gender and racial equality, black women in […]
• Equality and Globalization: Changing Gender Expectations The 21st century has experienced globalization, which is the increase in the integration of nations. Globalization has changed the gender expectations that were traditionally held by members of society.
• Gender Equality and Globalization’ Issues Since the world policies adopt a new progressive direction, the idea of gender equality enters the category of the ultimate Millennium development goals.
• US Progress in Freedom, Equality and Power Since Civil War When it comes to the pursuit of freedom and ideals of democracy, progress since the Civil War can be seen in the establishment of a sufficiently capable Federal government, efficient judiciary and presidency systems with […]
• Equality in the American System of Education According to Andrew Carnegie, the problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth in such a manner that would lead people to attach to each other as a family and live in harmony.
• Social Equity and Equality Concept Comparison In his view, American society has never been equal; hence application of equality in the distribution of important resources is impossible, meaning public administrators must undertake the role of studying the society to comprehend the […]
• Equality’ and Diversity Sociological Issues This plan ensures equity and equality in terms of access to healthcare for the American citizenry. Indeed, Daley and Feit confirm that healthcare professionals have the duty to offer services of equal quality to people, […]
• The US Federal Government Role in the Equality This essay seeks to highlight the major hits and misses in the role played by the three branches of the U.S.federal government in the struggle for black equality.
• Racial Equality Should Not Be Difficult The question of racism and segregation has been bothering the American society and the society of the whole world for generations.
• Why Do Conservatives Disagree on the Topic of Marriage Equality? They are of the opinion that legalizing homosexuality would weaken society values that are critical to the community’s existence because the basic units of a society are the traditional man, woman, and children living together […]
• Mary Wollstonecraft’s Achievements in Struggles for Gender Equality First wave feminists advocated for women to be granted the right to vote in the U.S. Their persistent pressure made the U.S.government to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment of 1920, which granted women the right to […]
• The Equality Act 2010 and Individual Employment Rights Since this study focuses on the case of Ladele and McFarlane with reference to the principle of conscientious, religious objection to same-sex relationships, we shall only look at elements of the Act that deal with […]
• Gender Equality: Male Dominance The simple reason is that gender inequality exists in affluent societies wherein women are free to do what they want, have access to education, and have the capacity to create wealth.
• Inequality of Development of Saudi Arabia Given the significance of oil in the country’s economic growth, the government channels most of its funds towards the development of the oil industry.
• Inequity Issue in the Workplace In this case the success or failure of an organization to reach the stated objectives lay in the hands of the people who are concerned and more importantly in the leader who spells the vision […]
• How Can the Objective of Equality at Work be Promoted through Recruitment and Selection? To investigate the relationship that such equality has with Human Resource Management practices To given insights on the mechanisms through which the objective of equality at work could be promoted through recruitment and selection For […]

💡 Controversial Gender Equality Essay Topics

• Were the Goals of Hampton/Tuskegee Consistent with the Democratic Ideals of self-Determination and Equality?
• “Savage Inequality” a Book by Jonathan Kozol
• “8 Is Not Hate: The Meaning of a Proposition” and “Prop 8 Hurt My Family—Ask Me How; Marriage Equality USA”
• Equality to All? Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto”
• American Socioeconomic Equality
• Is It Possible for Managers to Reduce Inequality in Business Organizations?
• Gender inequality in Algeria
• Tunisia’s Gender Equality
• How harness all the potentiality among the people to ensure there is equality
• The Impact of Higher Education Expansion on Income Inequality in China
• Color Blindness and Equality
• Public Policy and Social Inequality
• Inequality in U.S Healthcare: The Americare Insurance System
• Building Workplace Equality
• Affirmative Action: Achieving Race Equality in School Admissions
• Ensure equality of representation
• Income Inequality in Marxism, Structuralism, Neoliberalism, and Dependency Theory
• Religious Equality in America
• What Is ‘Liberal Representative Democracy’ and Does the Model Provide an Appropriate Combination of Freedom and Equality?
• Full Frontal Feminism – What is Still Preventing Women from Achieving Equality?
• Greater equality: the hidden key to better health and higher scores
• Media Patterns and Social Inequality
• Discrimination and Fight for Equality
• The Issue of Stereotyping in the US
• Nonhuman Animals in Moral Equality Theories
• There Will Never Be Equality in the World; There Will Always Be Very Rich and Very Poor People
• Equality of Opportunity and Condition Concepts
• Social Capital and Health Inequality
• Managing Diversity and Equality
• Dimensions to Political Thinking: Human Equality, Power, and Order
• The Influence on Health of Economic Inequality
• Scholars Comment on Gender Equality
• The Problem of Social and Economic Inequality in Modern Society
• Obtaining Objective Truth in Regards to Martin Luther King’s Role in the Fight for Equality in the United States
• Capitalism and World Inequality
• Education in Australia as a Tool of Promoting Equality of Opportunity
• Inequality of Women in China
• The Problem of the Racial Inequality in US
• Racial Inequality in America in 1998
• Citizens’ Equality in the United States
• The Race Equality Concept
• Anti-same-sex Marriage Laws and Amendments Violate the Constitutional Guarantees of Equality for all Citizens of the United States
• Free Exercise Clause: Freedom and Equality
• American Africans Action in the Struggle for Equality
• Chaucer and Sophocles Views on Gender Equality
• Liberty, Equality and Power
• The Fight for Equality in Martin Luther King’s Life and Writings
• African American Women and the Struggle for Racial Equality
• Marriage Equality: Same-Sex Marriage
• Gender Equality in the United States, China and Egypt
• Equality of Men and Women
• Are Women Important in Gulf Politics? What are the Main Barriers to Gender Equality?
• Are Economic Liberalization and Equality Compatible?
• Are Robots the Solution to Equality in the Job Interview Process?
• Can Certified Tea Value Chains Deliver Gender Equality in Tanzania?
• Can Guaranteed Tax Base Formulas Achieve Spending Equality?
• Can Liberty and Equality Be Reconciled in Political Theory?
• Can Recruitment and Selection Methods Be Chosen To Promote Equality at Work?
• Does Equal Opportunity Bring Men and Women Closer to Wealth Equality?
• Does the Media Hinder the Cause for Gender Equality?
• Does School Tracking Affect Equality of Opportunity?
• How Elvis Presley Brought Racial Equality?
• How Gender Equality Has Been Bridged in Sports in American Colleges?
• How Does Inclusive Practice Promotes Equality and Supports Diversity?
• How Mirror and Window Books Can Teach Children Equality?
• Why Is Gender Equality Ruining Everyone’s Happiness?
• Why the Americans Understand the Equality of the Sexes?
• Why Does Tocqueville Believes That Equality Leads to a Love of Centralized Authority?
• Why Cultural Ideology Constraints Fairness and Equality?
• What Has Limited the Impact of UK Disability Equality Law on Social Justice?
• Why Didn’t the Reconstruction Bring Justice and Equality to Freed Blacks?
• Why Embracing Gender Distinctions Can Create Equality?
• Why Freedom and Equality Is an Artificial Creation?
• Why Have Some Feminists Criticised the Idea of Gender Equality?
• Why Organizations Are Struggling for Achieve Equality and Manage Diversity?
• How To Transform Quatic Agricultural Systems Towards Gender Equality?
• What Are the Two Political Ideals of Freedom and Equality Claimed by Long and Roosevelt?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, February 28). 247 Equality Topics & Essay Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/equality-essay-examples/

"247 Equality Topics & Essay Examples." IvyPanda , 28 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/equality-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '247 Equality Topics & Essay Examples'. 28 February.

IvyPanda . 2024. "247 Equality Topics & Essay Examples." February 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/equality-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "247 Equality Topics & Essay Examples." February 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/equality-essay-examples/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "247 Equality Topics & Essay Examples." February 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/equality-essay-examples/.

• Gender Equality Questions
• Feminism Questions
• Race Essay Ideas
• American Dream Research Topics
• Racism Paper Topics
• Gender Stereotypes Essay Titles
• Sexism Essay Ideas
• Cultural Psychology Ideas
• Human Behavior Research Topics
• Equity Research Ideas
• Freedom Topics
• Integrity Questions
• Social Democracy Essay Titles
• Mindfulness Research Ideas
• Virtue Ethics Questions

Here’s How to Write an Equity Research Report: The Best Guide

October 17, 2016

Equity Research is a rewarding career.

To keep up, you need a strong foundation with the judgment to think critically, act independently, and be relentlessly analytical.

That’s why I wrote this guide — to empower you with the equity research(ER) report writing skills to stay ahead in the equity research career.

There is almost NO guide available that teaches you how to write an equity research report.

From textbooks to online video tutorials, you can check and let me know if you find one.

And, I felt that I should write a detailed and step-by-step guide— a guide that really starts at the beginning to equip already-intelligent analysts with a healthy balance of conceptual and practical advice.

The Advanced Guide to Equity Research Report Writing takes your writing to the next level.

Who Is This Guide for?

I wrote this guide for an audience of equity research analysts , investment banking professionals, industry analysts, market research professionals, business management students, and freelance writers.

Most of all, I want you to walk away from this guide feeling confident about your equity report writing skill.

What Is an Equity Research Report

This chapter explains what exactly an ER report is.

The questions like—Who makes it? Who reads and uses it? What are the different types of equity research reports?—are answered clearly and elaborately.

It briefly talks about the various key contents of an ER report.

And lastly, it explains the need to provide a disclaimer at the end of an ER report.

So before understanding how to write an ER report, let’s try to understand what exactly an equity ER is.

FINRA , the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, defines an equity research report, in Rule 2711 (a)(8) as,

 “A written or electronic communication that includes an analysis of equity securities of individual companies or industries , and that provides information reasonably sufficient upon which to base an investment decision.

Readers of Equity Research, more so than anything else, identify trends that make investment decisions easier to justify.

In simpler words, equity research is a document written and published by a brokerage house or securities firm for its clients to help them to make better decisions regarding which stocks to choose for profitable investment.

The report should be such that it should convince the client to make a decision.

The report should be crisp; the point of view should be clearly structured and articulated concisely.

In the investment industry, equity reports usually refer to ‘sell-side’ research, or investment research created by brokerage houses.

Such research is circulated to the corporate and retail clients of the brokerage house that publishes it.

Research produced by the ‘buy-side’, which includes mutual funds, pension funds, and portfolio managers, is usually for internal use and is not distributed to outside parties.

a. Different types of equity reports

In the above paragraph, we saw terms such as ‘sell-side’ and ‘buy-side’.

Let’s quickly understand what these terms mean:

There are two main types of equity research reports:

i. Sell-Side reports

Sell-side reports are the most common type of equity research reports in circulation.

They are normally produced by investment banks , typically for their clients to guide their investment decisions.

A sell-side analyst works for a brokerage firm or bank which manages individual clients and makes investment recommendations to them.

Sell-side analysts issue the often-heard recommendations of “buy”, “hold”, “neutral”, or “sell”.

These recommendations help clients make decisions to buy or sell stocks.

This is favourable for the brokerage firm as each time a client takes a decision to trade; the brokerage firm gets a commission on the transactions.

Click here to see some examples of sell-side reports

ii. Buy-Side reports

The ‘buy-side’ reports are internal reports, produced for the bank itself, and are guided by differing perspectives and motivations.

A buy-side analyst generally works for a mutual fund or a pension fund company.

They perform research and make recommendations to the money managers of the fund that hires them.

Buy-side analysts will verify how promising an investment seems and how well it fits with the fund’s investment strategy.

These recommendations are made exclusively for the benefit of the fund that employs them and is not available to anyone outside the fund.

Within the buy/sell group, there are other types of reports like initiating coverage reports, standard reports, Issue reports, Investor notes, and sector reports.

iii. Initiating coverage reports

The initiating coverage reports are conducted on firms that the bank has begun following and are typically more comprehensive in nature.

Initiating coverage reports analyze a company’s historical financial information, order books, efficiency, SWOT, cash-flows, and future earning potential, basis which it estimates the future earnings of the company and its P/E multiples.

Click here to see some examples of initiating coverage reports

iv. Standard reports

After an initiating report is produced standard reports will follow for as long as the brokerage house continues to track the stock.

Stocks that are tracked are typically part of an index like the SENSEX or are amongst the top stocks in an industry as these are the stocks that investors care about and are traded in larger volumes.

v. Issue reports

These reports are issued when generally companies announce earnings each quarter (Quarterly earnings reports).

vi. Investor notes

These reports are published a few times in between for incremental information and news.

For example – investor conference companies hold a big M&A deal or a major new product announcement from a competitor.

These are usually short-run updates and are typically just quantitative in nature.

vii. Sector reports

A sector report is a document that evaluates a given industry and the companies involved in it.

It is often included as part of a business plan and typically seeks to establish how one company can gain an advantage in industry through detailed research on competition, products, and customers.

Click here to download the sector report

b. Contents of an equity research report

Now that we have understood the different types of equity research reports, let’s try to see the contents of an ER report.

An ER report should not be more than 10 to 15 pages long and should be very crisp and concise.

It should give the reader a clear understanding of the opinion of the analyst writing the report.

An ER report typically has the following contents:

1. Analyst opinion and summary

2. Key highlights of the company

3. A snapshot of the industry

4. Financial ratio analysis

5. Financial Modeling and Valuation analysis

6. Risk factors

7. Disclosure and rationale of rating

Usually, most of the equity research reports have this information; however, there is no hard and fast rule in which an ER report should be written.

We will study in detail (with examples) how to write each of these segments of an ER report in the forthcoming chapters.

c. Importance of Disclaimers in Analyst Reports

As every ER report is an investment document, and investors use it to make decisions for buying or selling securities based on it, it is important for the report to have certain disclaimers to show un-biases of the analyst writing the report.

Some typical disclaimers are as follows:

• Every ER report entirely reflects views and personal opinions of the analyst as on the date of publication
• The equity research analyst does not have an interest in the shares of the company
• Compensation of the analyst is not linked directly to any specific research recommendations contained in the report

Financial Analysts or equity research analysts working in brokerage firms or sell-side analysts write equity research reports.

Equity research report writing process

Equity Research Report writing

After completing the fundamental analysis, financial statement analysis, ratio analysis, and valuation, the last part of the equity research process is writing equity research reports.

As an equity research analyst, you need to analyze the industry and the company first and then write the stock research report.

This step is paramount in your equity research analysis career .

This is important to write the equity research reports in such a way that your clients understand every word of it.

It’s also important to include relevant analysis that you’ve done in the report.

How to write a report

Let’s see each step of writing an equity research report in detail.

1. Company fundamental analysis

a) Macroeconomic Analysis

b) Checking public information of the company

c) Discussion/ interviews with company management

d) Prepare a 5-year cash flow model and earnings forecast model

e) Review your operational and financial assumptions

f) Assess management and competitive environment, buyers, suppliers, substitutes, porter 5-forces model that tells you the competitive advantage of the company.

2. Company valuation analysis

1. Use intrinsic valuation—Discounted Cash Flow(DCF) method

2. Relative valuation

3. sum-of-the-parts valuation method, wherever required.

Pointers for writing equity research reports

I’ve created a list of pointers purely based on my experience and observations and a bit of research about dos and don’ts while writing an equity research report.

1. A clear view of the company

Before writing the report, have a clear view of the company in terms of—Investment rationale, risk assessment, key growth drivers, cost drivers, and revenue drivers.

2. Recommendation/Rating

Clearly write the company’s name at the top of the report and mention your recommendation—buy, sell, hold.

You can also use the words—outperform, underperform, neutral or accumulate based on your valuation.

Have an image of an equity research report in your mind, and so you won’t miss these details.

Usually, there are templates available in your company and you need to write the report using these templates.

3. Target price

You need to mention the target price based on your valuation along with the recommendation.

4. Investment rationale

Write clearly your investment rationale. Why do you think the share price will go up/down?

5. Share price chart

Include a price chart of the stock that will show the last 52-weeks’ share price movement.

6.Business model

Mention the analysis of the company’s business model and how will it perform in the next 2-3 years.

7. Key ratio analysis

Include important ratio analysis of the company and 52-week high-low share price on a stock exchange.

Include market capitalization, Enterprise Value(EV), Earnings Before Interest Tax and Depreciation (EBITDA), EV/EBITDA, and dividend yield (%)

8. Product profile and segments

Analyze the company’s product profile, its various segments, and brands. Include current sales and forecasted revenue figures, cost, market size, company’s market share, competition, the company’s performance in domestic and other markets.

9. Economy-Industry-Company (E-I-C) Analysis

Cover the company’s fundamental analysis with supportive data.

10. Intrinsic and relative valuation

Perform DCF analysis and relative valuation. Relative valuation should be done with the company’s peers on the basis of Price-Earnings ratio (P/E), Price to Book ratio (P/B), Price to Sales (P/S), Return on Equity (ROE) and Return on Capital Employed (ROCE).

11. Reasoning for recommendation

Write proper reasoning for your recommendation. For example—Why buy the stock or why not to buy the stock. So, your reasoning has to be strong.

12. Unlock the value

Write what can unlock/increase/reduce the value of the company .

13. Legal matters

If the company is battling any case, write what could be its effects on the stock price.

14. Common industry points

While writing industry reports, write the points which are common for all players in the industry, for example, regulatory limitation, excise duty, oil prices, etc.

15. Covering all the areas in an equity research report

While writing the equity research report, assume that the reader is new to the company and he doesn’t have any idea about its business.

So, your report should include precise information about—product, financials, management, market, future plans of the company, growth estimates, and the risk factors of the company.

In short, as an equity research analyst, your equity analysis report writing process should be structured and you should follow the dos and don’ts mentioned in this post.

Sample equity research reports (PDFs):

The Walt Disney Company

If you have any queries, Speak Your Mind.

Key Takeaways

• Equity research report writing is a skill . You need to build this skill to go to the next level in your career . Top-notch careers in finance–equity research, investment banking , asset management, financial research, Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) units value this skill in high regard.
• There are different types of research reports–sell-side, buy-side, initiating coverage, standard, issue, investor notes, and sector reports. As an analyst, you should know all these reports.
• Contents of an equity research report include Analyst opinion and summary, Key highlights of the company,  A snapshot of the industry, Financial and ratio analysis, Valuation analysis, Risk factors, and Disclosure and rationale of rating. I’m going to cover all these sections in detail with examples in the coming chapters.

Now You Try It

I hope you can see the potential of equity research report writing skills for your career.

Yes, it takes hard work to create something great.

But with this skill, you already know ahead of time that your hard work is going to pay off.

I want you to give the skill a try and let me know how it works for you.

If you have a question or thought, leave a comment below and I’ll get right to it.

• Download BIWS Course sample videos here .
• Read Students’ Testimonials here .

Avadhut is the Founder of FinanceWalk. He enjoys writing on Finance Careers topics. Check our Financial Modeling Courses . Contact us for  Career Coaching based on Your Inner GPS.

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If you purchase BIWS courses through FinanceWalk links, I’ll give you a FREE Bonus of FinanceWalk's Prime Membership ($397 Value).

I see FinanceWalk's Prime Membership as a pretty perfect compliment to BIWS courses – BIWS helps you build financial modeling and investment banking skills and then I will help you build equity research and report writing skills.

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How To Do Equity Research: An Actionable Guide

ContentsWho Is This Guide for?What Is an Equity Research Reporta. Different types of equity reportsi. Sell-Side reportsii. Buy-Side reportsiii. Initiating coverage reportsiv. Standard reportsv. Issue reportsvi. Investor notesvii. Sector reportsb. Contents of an equity research reportc. Importance of Disclaimers in Analyst ReportsEquity research report writing processHow to write a report1. Company fundamental analysis2. Company valuation analysisPointers for writing equity research reports1. A clear view of the company2. Recommendation/Rating3. Target price4. Investment rationale5. Share price chart6.Business model7. Key ratio analysis8. Product profile ...

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Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

What's Next?

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Want to know the fastest and easiest ways to convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius? We've got you covered! Check out our guide to the best ways to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit (or vice versa).

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Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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Here’s How Data Can Help Unlock Education Equity

Tc’s renzhe yu, alex bowers, and youmi suk break down their ongoing, different approaches to the same goal: high quality education for all.

Now more than ever, educational equity — ensuring all students have access to meaningful educational opportunities, from college preparation and career assistance to support resources to civic participation — is crucial across America. However, the journey towards educational equity demands a multifaceted approach, with cross-collaboration and data at the helm. That’s where a core aspect of TC’s educator preparation and overall ethos comes into play, seeking to narrow the opportunity gaps millions of U.S. students face. 

While The Center for Educational Equity , established in 2005, focuses on research and policy around fair school funding and civic participation, three TC faculty members are finding unique ways to leverage data for equity. Renzhe Yu , Assistant Professor of Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining, is leveraging data analytics to uncover the unintended consequences of the rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence. Alex Bowers , Professor of Education Leadership, is showcasing the power of learning analytics and interoperable data sets to identify and address critical indicators of equity. Youmi Suk , Assistant Professor of Applied Statistics, is harnessing big educational data and cutting-edge machine learning methods to address questions about equity and fairness in educational practice.

Renzhe Yu, Assistant Professor of Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining; Alex Bowers, Professor of Education Leadership; Youmi Suk, Assistant Professor of Applied Statistics (Photo: TC Archives)

• To reveal the bias and unintended consequences of generative artificial intelligence , Renzhe Yu performs large-scale data analytics.
• In order to identify issues of equity in a transparent way, Alex Bowers utilizes learning analytics and public data.
• Working to improve test fairness and curriculum planning , Youmi Suk draws connections between psychometrics, causal inference and algorithmic fairness.

(Image: iStock)

How Data Analytics Can Address the Growing Digital Divides

Stemming from Yu’s interest in learning how to “equip ourselves to better address existing issues related to education inequity,” his most pressing research focuses on understanding how the mass adoption of generative artificial intelligence has exacerbated digital divides in schools and institutions. Explored in a forthcoming working paper, the project uses large-scale text data from the education system to examine differences in everyday teaching and learning experiences as well as institutional attitudes toward generative AI.

“There are students who are more tech-savvy, there are instructors who are more experienced in using technologies, there are institutions that are more open-minded…and they have probably taken good advantage of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools in the past year,” explains Yu. But there’s also a significant number of students, parents, instructors, and institutions that don’t have that kind of access or awareness. “Although it’s just one year, the emergence of this technology may have widened these gaps,” says Yu.

To explore this growing divide, Yu and his research team focused on real-world data sources instead of conducting lab-controlled experiments in order to see how these relationships are playing out in real life. Because of his familiarity with the tech industry and the still-common impulse to innovate without considering the way that entire populations can be left behind, Yu says, “it’s really important to identify these unintended consequences in the early phase of life for these technologies.”

Yu’s other research interest in algorithmic bias — where he has long been exploring how algorithms used for decision making are treating learners differently based on race or other socio-demographic markers — is also made more urgent by the emergence of generative AI tools because if biased algorithms are “having dynamic conversations with students, [as is the case with generative AI,] the negative consequences of any bias in the process would be even more concerning.”

Ultimately, Yu hopes that his work provides perspective that is often ignored in the innovation process in order to create an education system that achieves equity with the help of advanced technology. 

How Data Can Inform Equity Efforts in School Policy and Conversation

Meanwhile, Bowers is looking at new ways school leaders can use reliable, evidence-based data practices to support equity efforts in schools nationwide. “One of my goals is to help bring communities together around the data that already exists for them—that’s already available, and help empower those communities,” he explains.

His recent work focuses on building collaboration with urban schools to identify data-driven equity practices and outcomes in education. In using a multidimensional framework, Bowers is hoping to facilitate more meaningful discussions with school communities by moving away from stigmatizing variables like standardized test scores and graduation rates.

“I think school districts are excited to have a definition of equity that they can bring into these community conversations, both with the school board, but also with teachers, parents, students.”

The project is fueled by his earlier research , which explores the value of interoperable, equitable datasets, along with a report that he co-authored with the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP). The comprehensive report details the 16 indicators for assessing equity in education, including academic outcomes like test scores, graduation rates, behavioral data, and opportunities such as student engagement, access to quality learning, pre-K experiences, and more.These indicators give administrators and teachers a more transparent lens to examine school performance.

“It can help us move into a framework of, "How are we serving our students?" "Are we serving our communities?" It's moving away from fixating on the gaps and the outcomes and [instead] trying to problem solve as a collaborative opportunity through which we can bring in existing data.”

How Interdisciplinary Approaches to Analyzing Data Can Promote Fairness

For clearer reading.

Causal Inference: An interdisciplinary subfield that determines the cause of an observed effect by considering assumptions, design and estimation strategies.

Psychometrics: A subfield of psychology centered on theories and applications of measurement, assessment and testing.

A leading researcher exploring test accommodation effectiveness, Suk takes a multi-pronged approach to her main research goal of “developing and applying quantitative methods to address practical and important problems in the educational, social, and behavioral sciences.” One of her central projects is forging a connection between test fairness, a field of study that has been developed over 60 years, and algorithmic fairness, an emerging field with high stakes as algorithmic models are utilized in all aspects of life. 

“We can leverage the people, the methods and the concepts developed in test fairness in order to facilitate understanding of algorithmic fairness,” says Suk who is incorporating psychometrics and causal inference concepts into her work. “And it can go both ways. If there's any new discussion happening around algorithm fairness, we can leverage that discussion to make assessments and tests fairer.” As a part of this work, Suk is crafting new frameworks to investigate test fairness on the individual level instead of on the group level, based on the discussions on individual fairness within the algorithmic fairness research.

Her work is also directly informing her recent research on fair and personalized math curriculum recommendations for high school students, funded by the National Science Foundation. It’s known that students get the most benefit from personalized recommendations but “we have to be aware there may be some unconscious bias [in the recommendations],” explains Suk. To address this, Suk is applying algorithmic fairness constraints to create more equitable recommendations for high school students.

Through her varied research, Suk ultimately hopes to “create equitable and fair testing environments for all students and personalized curriculum plans that empower every student to succeed.”

— Sherri Gardner and Jaqueline Teschon

Tags: Evaluation & Learning Analytics Bias Education Leadership Evaluation & Learning Analytics

Programs: Applied Statistics Cognitive Science in Education Education Leadership Learning Analytics Measurement and Evaluation

Departments: Human Development Organization & Leadership

Published Monday, Apr 22, 2024

Teachers College Newsroom

Address: Institutional Advancement 193-197 Grace Dodge Hall

Box: 306 Phone: (212) 678-3231 Email: views@tc.columbia.edu

Equity Research Paper

Sample Equity Research Paper. Browse other research paper examples and check the list of political science research paper topics for more inspiration. If you need a research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Also, chech our custom research proposal writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Equity is usually defined as fairness, impartiality; justness. Consequently, Equity in Law is said to exist when justice administered between parties appears as based upon natural reason or ethical judgement— whether or not it is in conformity with written (State) law. Indeed, equity can be considered either as a concept immanent to the law or as a set of principles outside the law, the function of which is to allow the judge to give soft interpretations in concrete cases in order to reach not too unmerciful solutions. Hence, equity is working at large in legal systems where the judge plays an important role, like common law or other systems where state law has a reduced role, whilst the official use of it is very insignificant in other legal systems, such as positivist continental laws. Equity in Law can be examined under two main headings. Equity in Law has always been considered (a) ethically as an opportunity to refer to equity against positive (State) Law, and (b) politically as the way to open law to necessities borne from economic developments.

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Get 10% off with 24start discount code, 1. equity as a common expedient.

In this sense, equity is positioned between law and ethics. In the Western legal tradition, equity was even culturally perceived as the only foundation of law. Equity and justice go hand in hand in Western legal philosophy. But the Roman root aequus was translated by two words which acquired two very distinct meanings through the ages: ‘equity’ on the one hand, and ‘equality’ on the other. The distinction led to opposing political theories on law and justice.

Roman Law defined legal work as skillfulness in settling what is good and fair: Ars boni et aequi (Celsius and Ulp, Dig. I, 1, 1, pr.). Among traditional legal principles, we find also the rule according to which equity must be expected in everything, but above all in Law (Paul, Dig., 50, 17, 90). As Pretorian law, a great part of everyday Roman legal regulation was progressively built upon equity in order to complete positive law. The Roman distinction between ius honorarium and ius civile has been seen by some authors as a forerunner of what would later exist in England as a distinction between common law and equity: a ‘body of rules existing alongside the original civil law, founded on distinct principles, and claiming incidentally to supersede civil law in virtue of a superior sanctity inherent in these principles’ (Maine 1861, p. 25).

Equity is used to replace legal rules drawn from statute or common law when these rules are considered too inadequate or unyielding for the expectation of justice in a specific case. Hence, equity was always considered as a common expedient against legal (state) justice where this latter appeared too distant from ethics, moral or customs. This route to justice was historically employed to such a degree that the gambit was embodied in many legal traditions, re-emerging from time to time according to need.

In opposition to legal unfairness, equity is regarded as either a refuge (equity prompts legal rules to law givers) or a recourse (equity is the alternative source of a redress or remedy to those provided by established law).

From ancient times, equity was considered to be an efficient means to establish justice in law. Without equity, law would be unjust (Summum ius, summa injuria). Within legal anthropology, Henri Sumner Maine showed in his work Ancient Law (1861) that equity is considered an instrument to bring harmony to progressive societies. According to this author, equity is one of the three agencies by which primitive law has been adapted to the requirements of a developing society and an improving morality.

Equity was also considered in Western legal tradition as a complement or a corrective to positive law. There are a number of aphorisms on this topic, such as Hœc œquitas suggerit, etsi deficiamur jure or Æquitas nihil aliud est quam jus quam lex scripto prœtermisit, i.e., equity must be followed where there is no legal norm to reach a solution. But when the man in the street talks of ‘equity,’ he is thinking of ideal justice which may even be contrary to the law. Here lies that faith in the fairness of a claim to some natural law existing above positive laws or statutes. Equity focuses on the imperfections of law and can even be preferred to a legal norm where it provides a useful corrective to legal institutional justice by improving an equitable outcome: Placuit in omnibus rebus prœcipuam esse justitiœ œquitatisque quam stricti juris rationem. Equity is better than a solution drawn from a strict interpretation of law. Such a theory, elaborated from Aristotle onwards, runs through the western legal tradition through Roman Law, subsequent Canon Law (Grossi 1998) and right through continental legal regimes before the French revolution.

That law can be brought into harmony with society through equity is currently demonstrated by legal sociologists, whose research illustrates specific circumstances in which societies make appeals to alternative procedures where equity plays an important role. This is particularly clear when it is not ingrained within a culture to instinctively call on the law for help as the main way to resolve conflicts, such as in traditional Chinese or Japanese cultures. Moreover, equity is often grasped as an opportunity for a workable alternative to state law, where it is not envisaged by a written legal norm. In the last decades of the twentieth century, for instance, equity was cited in alternative movements by both Italian and Brazilian judges (Alternative Use of Law and Alternative Justice, in Arnaud 1993).

2. Equity As A Means Of Adapting Legal Regulation To Political Prerequisites For The Development Of An Economy

All through the building of the occidental legal tradition, whilst laws were considered a means to protect communities and insure their reproduction following a specific pattern, equity also appeared as the way to open up law to necessities born from the development of trade. Here, equity appears (a) as an earlier technique to create a society for merchants, and (b) in the last decades of the twentieth century, as a means to implement a global legal order.

2.1 Equity As A Foundation Of Trading Societies

At the end of the Middle Ages, the opposing pressures of the wish of kings to concentrate absolute powers in their hands, the opening up of everyday life to trade and merchants, as well as the emergence of a bourgeoisie, led the various national laws to adapt themselves to the development of landed and propertied interests. Western laws gradually expanded into opposing systems: the common law and equity tradition on the one hand and continental legal positivism on the other.

After centuries of legal rationalization, equity was definitively taken up from the discourse of ethics and located as one of the foundations of law, appealing to natural law and reason, even as against positive law and statutes (Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, Christian Wolff and their disciples in Northern Europe; Jean Domat in France).

As to the continental romano-canonic tradition, equity was quickly made subservient to state law. Despite the influence of Domat’s work on French jurisprudence, equity was forbidden in France by the Ordonnance civile of 1667. The French Revolution of 1789 was partially directed against the discretionary power of judges. A project to reintroduce equity as a tool in judicial interpretation in the French Civil Code was drastically cut down by Bonaparte. Finally, the judge was considered merely to be the mouthpiece of state law. It is true that we can find counterexamples in nineteenth-century France, such as judicial decisions by the ‘Bon Juge Magnaud’ who used equity to avoid enforcing the law against the poor. But this use of equity was a rarity and almost all such decisions were reversed by the court of appeal.

We can also identify some slight remains of equity in Civil Law, even in the French Civil Code (articles 565, 1135, 1854). The strongest examples are, however, drawn from the Swiss Civil Code, articles 1 and 4: ‘The law must be applied in all cases which come within the letter or the spirit of any of its provisions. Where no provision applies, the judge shall decide according to the existing customary law, and, failing which, according to the rules which he would lay down if he had himself to act as legislator. Herein he must be guided by approved legal doctrine and case-law … Where the law expressly leaves a point to the discretion of the judge, or directs him to take circumstances into consideration, or to consider whether a ground alleged is material, he must base his decision on principles of justice and equity’ (see Lloyd and Freeman, p. 1231).

At the same time, in the common law countries, legal developments went in the opposite direction. There, indeed, equity refers to that part of the law of England which is derived not from the custom of the realm nor the enactments of Parliament, but from the decisions of the old Court of Chancery, consolidated in 1873, along with the other superior courts in the supreme court of judicature. Such equity pertains to a right recognized by a court of equity through a specific procedure. Here, we are faced with procedural equity and not ‘natural justice.’ Jurisdiction in equity is one of the three clearly marked divisions into which the jurisdiction of the court falls, together with a miscellaneous jurisdiction and a common law jurisdiction. The equitable jurisdiction of the court originated in the power which the chancellor assumed in the Middle Ages to modify a strict and formal legal system on moral grounds.

There are a number of principles used as guidelines when it is necessary to make appeal to this notion of equity; equity acts in personam; equity will not suffer a wrong to be without a remedy; equity follows the law; equity looks to the intent rather than the form; equity imputes an intent to fulfil an obligation; equitable remedies are discretionary; delay defeats equities; he who comes into equity must come with clean hands; equity takes into account the balance of convenience; where there are equal equities, the law prevails and the first in time prevails; equity, like nature, does nothing in vain; equity never wants a trustee; equity aids the vigilant; equality is equity; equity will not assist a volunteer; equity will not permit a statute to be a cloak for fraud.

In England, because the remedies which the common law courts could give were initially limited by the forms of writs available, men turned to the Chancellor for equity for assistance. The two systems came to be administered by wholly independent tribunals whose decisions were frequently in conflict. The early jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery was in its nature extremely vague. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, it is possible to discern certain general principles in the exercise of the court’s jurisdiction. The early seventeenth century was the principal turning point in the history of the court, for the common law lawyers were seeking to prohibit the Chancery from interfering with common law rights. King James I resolved the conflict between the two jurisdictions in favor of Chancery. From this time onward, although the conflict did not die down until the end of that century, the court gradually developed jurisdiction co-ordinate with that of the common law courts and on settled principles. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it came to follow precedent as strictly as they.

The principal distinction between the two systems was that, whereas the rules of common law were supposed to have been established since time immemorial, those of equity could in almost every case be traced to the Chancellor who invented them. In the nineteenth century the jurisdiction of Chancery, now clearly defined, was frequently classified according to its relationship to the common law as being exclusive, concurrent or auxiliary. By the middle of the twentieth century, the Chancery division consisted of the Lord Chancellor and judges divided into groups which were respectively assigned matters within the peculiar jurisdiction of the division.

In the USA, equity was developed with relative consistency during the nineteenth century. The expansion of the equity system was subject to statutory grants bestowed to each state, which constitutes a specific feature of American legal history. During the Civil War, the equitable jurisdiction was generally attributed to courts of double jurisdiction. Since 1848, many states excluded the distinction between law and equity in favor of one ‘civil action.’ At last, there was a complete fusion of law and equity by the adoption, in 1938, of the federal rules of civil procedure, promulgated by the US Supreme Court under authority of an Act of Congress.

2.2 Equity As A Referent In The Framework Of Contemporary Political Theory

Recently, the use of equity was proposed by neoliberal legal philosophers as a way to put into common practice some fundamental legal principles. Hence, equity has become a referent in the framework of globalization, re-emerging in many new areas of legal work, e.g., private, regional and international judicial assemblies, and directly in relation to global governance. The importance of the recourse to equity in contemporary neoliberal legal and political philosophy is due to (a) the predominance of the Anglo-American legal tradition in international legal relations, (b) the special focus given to the above-mentioned principle according to which ‘equality is equity,’ and finally (c) the claim for a minimal state.

After much controversy surrounding the Aristotelian idea of ‘corrective justice,’ equity was reintroduced as the legal principle of equal treatment of people in the allocation of legal benefits and obligations. John Rawls designates as ‘equality of fair opportunity’ the equity of opportunities which cannot be reduced to a merely hypothetical right (Rawls 1971, pp. 14, 46). Here arises a paradox: the more the State intervenes in establishing equality of opportunities, the more it stands apart from the ideal of contractualism which characterizes the minimal state. Consequently, there could be no coherent basis for imposing common global lawful and unique interpretations (for example, of human rights). This means that it would not be possible to universally expect the same behavior through all institutions, whether national, local, or international.

Popper’s claim for the importance of tradition, a tradition which offers the moral structure of a society, is grounded in the idea that herein lies the social meaning of justice and equity. On the one hand, tradition reveals the degree of moral feeling which each society attains; on the other, should there be conflict between opposing interests, tradition is the moral framework which allows us to find fair or equitable compromises (Popper 1963, Chap. 17, paragraph 3). Institutions alone give a society its legal structure appropriate to this moral background.

According to Friedrich Hayek, society is developing upon a set of individual interests pursued, although not always fully recognized, in the framework of the ‘open society’ or ‘great society’—the global society. A free society is a pluralist society without a common hierarchy of peculiar achievements. The market supposes a discipline, a system of rules of behavior. The market is a game able to create wealth. Indeed, it gives each player adequate information in order to allow him her to answer to needs of which he she is not able to be directly aware. Thanks to this game, opportunities increase for each player since nobody is treated unequally. And there is no inequality when the result of the game is different for different people: on the contrary, the market mechanism itself produces impersonal flags, signs which show the players when and how they have to modify their actions to adapt to events of which they are only indirectly aware.

States from time to time wish to introduce social justice through legal regulation. But equity cannot be considered as a means of establishing social justice. Social justice, Hayek writes (Hayek 1973), destroys the spontaneous feature of the market, proscribes the possibility of a great society, and is incompatible with liberty. In other words, equality of treatment before the law—even in the name of charity—leads to arbitrary outcomes. There are requests and revolts against the abstraction of the rules which must be observed within the framework of the Great Society. Indeed, there is always a predilection for concrete human circumstances. But such feedback would only reveal a lack of intellectual and moral maturity faced with the necessities of an impersonal global order of humankind.

Globalization supposes an interdependence within all humankind as we move towards the realization of an open society in which people must accept risk. Consequently, globalization produces inequalities. Peace will result only from the observance of rules of fair behavior. Equity will be realized provided that everybody is treated equally according to these abstract rules of fair behavior. Equality of opportunities cannot be implemented beyond equal treatment before the law.

The State must not involve itself in a process of social justice with the purpose of giving to a group of citizens what belongs to others. Success or failure must depend only upon each person’s action and cannot flow from the knowledge and power held by public authorities. Authoritarian intervention generates disorder and cannot be equitable. To speak of concrete common goals is specific to small closed societies in which people were protected by community at the price of their freedom. In contrast, a great society of free people can exist only if everybody submits to ‘equal’ abstract rules.

In this context, it is easy to understand that the state must play a minimal role. The ‘entitlement theory’ (Nozick 1974) based upon a discussion of Hart’s ‘principle of fairness’ (Hart 1961) challenges the claims for State action aimed at implementing equality among people.

Where the State is striking space, the judge becomes a masterpiece in the framework of the legal structure. The judge enjoys extended powers in such a society. He has to correct permanently the disturbances within an order which is spontaneous, not artificial, and which tells people what they have to do. Such a judge must decide in ‘equity’ in the sense that he has to decide if people’s behavior is appropriate to what can normally be expected in comparison with the common conduct of the members of the same group.

The law of the judges is a translation of what people have learned from their actions. Judges’ function is to maintain a permanent and efficient order in people’s behavior. The judge contributes to improving a given order, an order which must not be upset by changes within relationships between citizens.

Such contemporary theoretical views on equity are particularly significant. Globalization is promoting neoliberal views on law, justice and equity. Indeed, equity has already become a common referent for regional and international Courts of Justice. This leads in turn to many ambiguities, for instance in the implementation of the European Union’s Equal Treatment Directive against sex discrimination. This last rule is based upon a general feeling of equity … but supposes some affirmative action through Community (state) intervention (see the European Law Journal 1998, and Posner 1993, pp. 404–5). The same ambiguity can be found in the report by the Commission on Global Governance entitled Our Global Neighborhood (Commission on Global Governance 1995). In this report, written at the request of the United Nations, we read that ‘Justice and equity are essential human values. Respect for them is indispensable for peace and progress … Where large numbers of citizens are treated unfairly or denied their due … discontent is inevitable and conflict likely.’ However, ‘a concern for equity is not tantamount to an insistence on equality.’ Therefore, equity ‘does call for deliberate efforts to reduce gross inequalities, to deal with factors that cause or perpetuate them, and to promote a fairer sharing of resources’ (Commission on Global Governance 1995, p. 51). This is good as political principle, but what practical legal rule can flow from such abstract, inconsistent, and equivocal discourse?

Nevertheless, and despite of the lack of general agreement on its relationship with equality, equity appears as a newly contemporary and significant notion which promises great possibilities for redesigning law-making, the administration of justice, and the process of judicial decision-making.

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