The role of cognitive and socioemotional skills alongside education in determining people's success in the labour market has been the topic of a growing body of research - but previous studies have mostly missed middle-income countries and the developing world because measures of those skills and data on employment and earnings on large enough samples of adults have typically not been available. Using comparable survey data on these schooling, skills and labour market outcomes from 13 developing and emerging economies worldwide, this book revisits human capital and gender inequality models. It presents new estimates of the returns to different levels of schooling as well as cognitive and socioemotional skills for women and men. It examines whether those returns are due to levels of human capital or to structural bias in labour markets, and how these two factors work across the earnings spectrum. The book examines the existence of 'glass ceilings' and 'sticky floors' for women using this expanded measure of human capital. Further, by analyzing a group of countries of wide-ranging levels of economic development and socio-political contexts, the book reveals patterns and insights into how context mediates the relationship between skills and gender gaps in labour market outcomes. This book will be of interest to scholars of human capital and gender inequality in the labour market and development economics, as well as gender and development policy makers.

Despite the great expansion of educational opportunities worldwide during the past thirty years, women in most developing countries still receive less schooling than men. Yet there is compelling evidence that the education of girls and women promotes both individual and national well-being. An example is the strong link between a woman's education and her employment and income. Another is that better-educated women bear fewer children, who have better chances of surviving infancy, of being healthy, and of attending school. When women are deprived of an education, individuals, families, and children, as well as the societies in which they live, suffer. When women are adequately educated everyone benefits.

Why, then, do women in much of the developing world continue to lag behind men in measures of educational attainment, including literacy, length of schooling, and educational achievement? This volume begins to address this puzzle by examining how educational decisions are made. This is done by exploring the costs and benefits, both public and private, that determine how much families invest in educating their daughters and their sons. The volume illustrates the importance of economic and cultural differences among developing countries in explaining variations in the manner in which these costs and benefits influence schooling choices.

The book brings together information on women's education and development, reviews research results for each developing region, identifies gaps in current knowledge, and discusses problems of methodology. The contributors assess the strategies that have been used to improve schooling for girls and women and point the way to an agenda for research, policy, and programs. The study concludes with a challenge to researchers, policymakers, and development specialists to ensure that during the next century women in the developing world do not remain educationally disadvantaged..

This is a beginner's guide to contemplation for anyone in the second half of life and also a love story. Autumn Years describes the practice of contemplation as part of a strategy of successful aging. Recognizing that there is no single contemplative path, it includes: sitting meditation, centering prayer, walking meditation, and loving-kindness meditation. It also looks at other practices as well: yoga, lectio divina, koan study, music meditation, dream work, and even travel as pilgrimage.
'Shows that marriage is as much a spiritual journey as monasticism... youth only the beginning of the human exploration of wonder, divine passion, and holiness.' Laurence Freeman, O.S.B., director of the World Community of Christian Meditation