About FutureGEN
FutureGEN is a transnational research project funded by the Gender-Net Plus, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Swedish Research Council. It is comprised of a consortium of multi-disciplinary researchers located in three countries (Austria, Canada and Sweden).
The overarching objective of FutureGEN is to build evidence on how entwined GENder inequalities in health and care-giving/receiving evolve across GENerations in connection with cultural and social contexts and individual realities, and how identified sex/gender inequalities may evolve in the FUTURE. In doing so FutureGEN will identify opportunities to achieve SDG3 and SGD5 through improved policies.
Background
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have placed inequalities (i.e. differences between groups, primarily gender and age) at the heart of public policies, as they aim to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” (SDG5) and “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages” (SDG3). Currently, however, there are still marked gender differences in health, as women live longer than men, but live a greater portion of their lives in poor health. Clearly a gender gap remains in the likelihood of achieving a healthy life.
SDG5 also calls for tackling related gender inequalities, namely in care provided to others, by valuing unpaid and domestic work and sharing it equally within households. Compared to men, women of all ages still shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid work, particularly caring for older people.
Objectives
1. To identify the evolution of gender health differentials across cohorts and their determinants and in turn, improve policies and identify opportunities to achieve gender equality in the future.
2. To identify how and why the gender gradient in care provision and receiving has evolved across different cohorts in order to substantially improve policies and interventions to achieve gender equality in the future.
3. To identify possible future trends of inequalities in health and care in future cohorts of older people.
4. To examine and discuss the meanings of different measures of health, socio-economic position (SEP) and care has the potential to improve the assessment of gender equalities in health, care-giving, and ageing.
5. To disentangle the interactions between social traits including gender on health and care provision and receiving.
Consortium
Ricardo Rodrigues (PI and project coordinator), European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research (Austria)
Susan P. Phillips (PI), Queen’s University (Canada)
Stefan Fors (PI), Karolinska Institutet (Sweden)
Project duration
March 2019 – December 2022