Various Political and Social Challenges Including Wars and Displacement in Empowering Women and Girls in Science

Poor gender ratio in science and engineering has been a global concern, despite growing number of female scientists in the world. Women’s empowerment in science is key to achieve human progress and dignity and directly related to accomplishing SDG 16: "Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels". What are the challenges that hinder women and girls’ progress in science? Added to several challenges discussed below, wars and displaced population create obstacles for female education and women’s advancement in science and technology. There are some challenges that have prevailed for the last two decades (e.g. economic insecurity) and new challenges that are the results of the new forms wars, civil wars and extremism (e.g., large scale armed conflicts that involves state and non-state actors which have produced large numbers of displaced women in the Middle East who lost their jobs and isolated elsewhere, many young displaced females and refugees and who have no access to formal education and who face health risks in conflict and displacement settings, and new forms of gender discrimination produced by religious extremism).......