The Forum for Research on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies and the International School of Economics at TSU (ISET) and its Policy Institute, are delighted to extend a warm invitation to participate in an international conference on gender economics entitled: "Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment in Time of Crisis”.

Geostat has published its rapid estimate of the real GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2022, and its estimated growth stands at 9.5%, which is 2.5 percentage points below the ISET-PI’s most recent forecast.

Gender inequality has been a persistent (albeit steadily improving) problem for years. The COVID-induced crisis put women in a disproportionately disadvantaged position, jeopardizing decades of progress achieved towards equality between men and women.

The war in Ukraine had just begun when I wrote (on the ISET Policy Institute's website and in the Georgian Times) that the present events in Ukraine offer the world a chance to become better. I could not have predicted at the time that hostilities would unfold in such a disastrous fashion or scale, nor could I have anticipated that, following four weeks of the war, we would witness an even larger and, I would say unimaginable human and global catastrophe.

As I am writing these lines, Russian tanks are moving deeper into the territory of my country, Ukraine, and emotions are threatening to overwhelm me. But emotions cannot shake what we, as economics scholars, value the most: devotion to truth and careful, impartial use of facts and logic to arrive at conclusions.