Throughout history, societies have used socio-biological markers, such as gender and age, to assign social positions, prescribe gender and age-based roles, and distribute scarce resources. In the social sciences, scholars tended to look separately at how gender and age shaped the human experience, social roles, and resource allocation.

Women are generally under-represented in political offices worldwide, and their under-representation becomes larger in more senior positions. In the first brief, the author reviews some recent academic literature in economics and political science on the likely causes of women’s under-representation. Broadly speaking, the literature has divided such causes into “supply-side” and “demand-side” factors.

On the 13th of November, ISET was visited by Joey Cherdarchuk of Darkhorse Analytics, a Canadian company specializing in data science and information design. The firm is dedicated to helping organizations and individuals present their data in a clear and understandable way; in an often humorous and highly informative workshop, Mr. Cherdarchuk demonstrated how failures in data presentation can be misleading (wilfully or otherwise) and inaccurate.

This year has plagued a number of countries with tremendous natural disasters and extreme weather events. Greece was challenged with extensive fires and South Africa with a shortage of water. As late as November this year, the US was still struggling to tame forest fires. Something is certainly happening with the climate. These problems arise from society only being concerned with growth.

October 30 – November 1, 2018, Pati Mamardashvili traveled to Tashkent to present at the “Social science knowledge and sustainable agricultural development along the Silk Road” conference after being invited to participate as a keynote speaker. She shared the experience of ISET as a reform model for higher education in the post-Soviet world.