Hana Barqawi realised her dream of opening her own children's furniture store two years ago in the Jordanian capital of Amman. Ms Barqawi is part of a wave of female entrepreneurs that has swept across the Middle East and North Africa area over the past decade or more. She is not surprised: "Arab women are well-educated, openminded, open to new ideas, new cultures, new challenges," she says. Nor has she found cultural attitudes to be a major problem, with Jordanian men accepting the new female business presence. But Ms Barqawi notes that while servants and nannies are available to help with childcare, balancing work and family life has now become a daily juggle for many women like her. But to what extent do Ms Barqawi's experiences reflect those of other women across the Middle East and North Africa region?

Long ago I gave up trying to break through the so-called “glass ceiling” that has kept women like me out of higher management. Instead I decided to create new enterprises in which management could be reinvented by women. On 8 March 2005, I launched a business incubator devoted exclusively to projects by female entrepreneurs.

Just how significant is international migration in the light of other globalisation developments? One obvious starting point for answering the question is to ask how many of the current world population of 6.7 billion people are international migrants, defined as persons living outside their country of birth.

Women political leaders remain a rarity in OECD countries. True, there is Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Helen Clark of New Zealand, and high-profile women candidates are battling it out in major election campaigns in France and the US. But did you know that women are still vastly outnumbered by men in all the world’s parliaments?

It is a century since Marie Curie won two Nobel prizes, one for physics and the other for chemistry. How can more women be encouraged to work in science? A timely question in view of International Women's Day on 8 March.

“Tradition is a guide and not a jailer”, wrote W. Somerset Maugham. Could it be that some traditions, however rooted in great histories and cultures, are now trapping countries in poverty? This certainly appears to be the case when it comes to the influence of social and cultural norms on the status of women.

Which came first, working mothers or day care centres? More mothers in the workforce generally spur the development of childcare facilities. In this study of four of the wealthier OECD countries–Canada, Finland, Sweden and the UK–where three out of four women between the ages of 25 and 54 hold down jobs, the Swedish experience suggests that without publicly-assisted childcare, the upper limit for female employment would be around 60%.

Gender equality has come a long way since International Women’s Day was first celebrated in Europe in 8 March 1911. But while there is reason to celebrate, there is also far more to be done. The Gender, Institutions and Development Database (GID), a new OECD database (see link below), can help point the way forward. It shows deeply rooted social norms and traditions continue to harm women’s economic opportunities in many countries around the world.