Radhika Balakrishnan (born in Ootacamund, India) is the faculty director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University. [1] Currently, she serves as the Chair of the Board of the United States Human Rights Network and Chair on the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Commissioner for the Commission for Gender Equity for the City of New York, [2] [3] and President of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) for 2020-2021. [4]
Radhika Balakrishnan grew up in Tamil Nadu, India and moved to Chicago, Illinois at the age of 13. [5] She attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign initially to study engineering, but switched majors and graduated in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. It was at the University of Illinois that she first became involved in the women's movement, which inspired her to study economics. [5] In 1985 she received her Master of Arts in Economics, and in 1990 she received her Ph.D. in Economics, both from Rutgers University. [6]
From 1992 to 1995, Radhika Balakrishnan worked at the Ford Foundation as a program officer in the Asian Regional Program. [7] [8] From 2003 to 2009, she was a professor at Marymount Manhattan College where she taught economics and international studies [6] [9] In September 2009, she joined Rutgers University as a professor of Women's and Gender Studies and the executive director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership, [6] [10] where she focused on issues of economics and social justice from a feminist perspective as they relate to macroeconomic policy, especially in health and education. [5] Balakrishnan now serves as the faculty director of the Center. [11]
Balakrishnan's primary research interests are gender and development, human rights and the global economy, and human rights and economic social rights. [15]
Her publications include: [6] [16]
Feminist economics is the critical study of economics and economies, with a focus on gender-aware and inclusive economic inquiry and policy analysis. Feminist economic researchers include academics, activists, policy theorists, and practitioners. Much feminist economic research focuses on topics that have been neglected in the field, such as care work, intimate partner violence, or on economic theories which could be improved through better incorporation of gendered effects and interactions, such as between paid and unpaid sectors of economies. Other feminist scholars have engaged in new forms of data collection and measurement such as the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), and more gender-aware theories such as the capabilities approach. Feminist economics is oriented towards the goal of "enhancing the well-being of children, women, and men in local, national, and transnational communities."
Charlotte Anne Bunch is an American feminist author and organizer in women's rights and human rights movements. Bunch is currently the founding director and senior scholar at the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is also a distinguished professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers.
Amina Mama is a Nigerian-British writer, activist and academic. Her main areas of focus have been post-colonial, militarist and gender issues. She has lived in Africa, Europe and North America, and worked to bridge the gap between feminists and related movements across the globe.
Devaki Jain is an Indian economist and writer, who has worked mainly in the field of feminist economics. In 2006 she was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award from Government of India, for her contribution to social justice and the empowerment of women.
The Global Fund for Women is a non-profit foundation funding women's human rights initiatives. It was founded in 1987 by New Zealander Anne Firth Murray, and co-founded by Frances Kissling and Laura Lederer to fund women's initiatives around the world. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Since 1988, the foundation has awarded over $100 million in grants to over 4,000 organizations supporting progressive women's rights in over 170 countries. Ms. Magazine has called the Global Fund for Women "one of the leading global feminist funds."
France Winddance Twine is a Black and Native American sociologist, ethnographer, visual artist, and documentary filmmaker. Twine has conducted field research in Brazil, the UK, and the United States on race, racism, and anti-racism. She has published 11 books and more than 100 articles, review essays, and books on these topics.
Bina Agarwal is an Indian development economist and Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the Global Development Institute at The University of Manchester. She has written extensively on land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; legal change; and agriculture and technological transformation.
The Center for Women's Global Leadership, based at Rutgers University, was founded in 1989 by Charlotte Bunch, the former executive director and an internationally renowned activist for women's human rights. Executive Director Krishanti Dharmaraj is also the founder of the Dignity Index and co-founder of WILD for Human Rights and the Sri Lanka Children's Fund. The former executive director, Radhika Balakrishnan, is now the faculty director, and a professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers, chair of the Board of the US Human Rights Network, and a board member of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Located on Douglass Residential College at Rutgers University, CWGL is a unit of International Programs within the School of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the Institute for Women's Leadership, a consortium of women's programs at Rutgers.
Diane Rosemary Elson is a British economist, sociologist and gender and development social scientist. She is Professor Emerita of sociology at the University of Essex and a former professor of development studies at the University of Manchester.
Lourdes Benería is a Spanish–American economist. She was Professor Emerita at Cornell University's Department of City and Regional Planning. The author and editor of many books and articles, her work has concentrated on topics having to do with labor economics, women's work, the informal economy, Gender and development, Latin American Development and globalization. Before Cornell, she taught at Rutgers University and has given courses in other international centers. She worked at the ILO for two years and has collaborated with other UN organizations, such as UNIFEM and UNDP, and with several NGOs. She obtained her PhD at Columbia University in 1975.
The Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) campaign was a network of over 300 women's, human rights and social justice groups around the world. The GEAR campaign urged UN Member States and the UN Secretariat to move swiftly forward to create a new UN gender equality entity. GEAR also urges the UN to set up a transparent process now for recruiting the best qualified Under Secretary-General to head this agency. The United Nations must move without further delay to implement changes that it has repeatedly recognized as critical to fulfilling its mandate of working for gender equality as a crucial component of development, human rights, peace, and security.
Margunn Bjørnholt is a Norwegian sociologist and economist. She is a research professor at the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS) and a professor of sociology at the University of Bergen. Her research has focused on financial institutions, management and working life and later on gender equality, migration and violence. She has also worked as a consultant, a civil servant, served as an expert to the European Commission and been president of the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights.
Irma P. McClaurin is an American poet, anthropologist, academic, and leadership consultant. She was the first female president of Shaw University, and is the author or editor of several books on topics including the culture of Belize, black feminism, African-American history, and her own poetry.
Yana van der Meulen Rodgers is a professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University,. She also works regularly as a consultant for the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and the United Nations. She has authored numerous journal articles in economics and has written two books. From 2018 to 2024 she served as Faculty Director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers, and she was the president of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) from 2013 to 2014.
The Global 16 Days Campaign is an international campaign to challenge violence against women and girls. The campaign runs every year from 25th November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to 10 December, Human Rights Day.
Radhika Chandiramani is the founder of TARSHI, a New Delhi–based NGO that works on issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights. She is a clinical psychologist, writer and editor. Her published works on sexuality and human rights have been covered in media and scholarly reviews. Chandiramani received the MacArthur Fellowship in the year 1995 for leadership development. She is also the recipient of the 2003 Soros Reproductive Health and Rights Fellowship from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Margo Okazawa-Rey, is an American professor emerita, educator, writer, and social justice activist, who is most known as a founding member of the Combahee River Collective, and for her transnational feminist advocacy.
Amina Doherty is a Nigerian/Antiguan feminist, artist and women's rights advocate. As an African-Caribbean feminist and women's rights advocate, her work is centered around raising awareness for social justice through movement-building, and innovative approaches to philanthropy and grantmaking. Amina's work takes many forms: art exhibitions, community programs, cultural events, philanthropic advising, and grantmaking initiatives.
Jacqui True is a political scientist and expert in gender studies. She is a professor of international relations at Monash University, where she is also Director of the Centre for Gender, Peace and Security. She studies international relations, gender mainstreaming, violence against women and its connections to political economy, and the methodology of feminist social science.
Yakin Ertürk is a Turkish former United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and board member of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), and was a professor of Sociology.
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