Keynote speakers for the 2018 Pathways to Gender Equality Conference include distinguished scholars, policy makers, and advocates who are committed to the centrality of gender analysis in economic research and policy.

Opening Plenary: Diversifying Economics

Moderator

Cecilia Conrad

Speakers

• Bina Agarwal
• Janet Yellen
• Nancy Folbre
• M.V. Lee Badgett
• Maria Floro

Closing Plenary: Policy Priorities Moving Forward

Moderator

Heidi Hartmann

Speakers

• Caren Grown
• Shahra Razavi
• John Schmitt
• Adriana Kugler
• Kate Bahn

Bina Agarwal

Professor of Development Economics and Environment
University of Manchester

Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK. Prior to this, she was Director and Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University, where she continues to be affiliated. Educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Delhi, she has held distinguished teaching and research positions at many universities, including Harvard, Princeton, Michigan, Minnesota (as the Winton Chair), and the New York University School of Law. She was Harvard’s first Daniel Ingalls Visiting Professor and later a Research Fellow at the Ash Institute, Kennedy School of Government. She has also been a fellow of Radcliffe’s Bunting Institute at Harvard. Agarwal's research contributions cover both theory and empirical analysis, with a particular focus on the most disadvantaged. An economist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary and intercountry explorations, her publications include 12 books and 84 academic papers. She writes especially from a political economy and gender perspective on diverse but interconnected subjects, such as property, land rights and livelihoods; environmental governance, sustainable development and collective action; agriculture, technology and food security; poverty and institutional transformation; legal change; and intersecting inequalities.

M.V. Lee Badgett 

Professor of Economics
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

M.V. Lee Badgett is a professor of economics and former director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Williams Distinguished Scholar at UCLA’s Williams Institute. She studies family policy issues and labor market discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, and gender. Her latest book, When Gay People Get Married: What Happens When Societies Legalize Same-Sex Marriage (NYU Press, 2009), focuses on the U.S. and European experiences with marriage equality for gay couples. She co-edited of the recent book, Sexual Orientation Discrimination: An International Perspective (Routledge, 2007). Her first book, Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men (University of Chicago Press, 2001), presented her groundbreaking work debunking the myth of gay affluence.

Prof. Badgett’s policy-related work includes testifying as an expert witness in legislative matters and litigation, analyzing public policies, consulting with regulatory bodies, briefing policymakers, writing op-ed pieces, speaking with journalists, and advising businesses. In 2010 she was an expert witness in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial on the constitutionality of Proposition 8.

Kate Bahn

Economist
Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Kate Bahn is an economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Her areas of research include gender, race, and ethnicity in the labor market, care work, and monopsonistic labor markets.

Dr. Bahn also serves as the executive vice president and secretary for the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE). She has published popular economics writing for a variety of publications, including The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, and Newsweek. She received her doctorate in economics from the New School for Social Research and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Hampshire College.

Cecilia Conrad

Managing Director
MacArthur Foundation

Cecilia Conrad leads the MacArthur Fellows Program, the MacArthur Awards for Creative and Effective Institutions, and 100&Change, the Foundation’s competition for a single $100 million grant to help solve a critical problem of our time. Before joining the foundation in January 2013, she had a distinguished career as both a professor and an administrator at Pomona College, Claremont, CA. She joined the economics faculty at Pomona College in 1995. She served as Associate Dean of the College (2004-2007), as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College (2009-2012), and as Acting President (Fall 2012). From 2007-2009, she was interim Vice President and Dean of the Faculty at Scripps College.

Currently, Dr. Conrad serves on the Board of Trustees of Muhlenberg College and Bryn Mawr College. Previously, she was the director of the American Economic Association's (AEA's) Committee on the Status Minority Groups in the Economics Profession (CSMGEP)'s mentoring program. She is also a past president of the National Economic Association and of the International Association for Feminist Economics.

Maria S. Floro

Professor of Economics
American University

Maria S. Floro is Professor of Economics at American University in Washington DC and served as co-director of the Graduate Program on Gender Analysis in Economics (PGAE) between 2009-2018. Her publications include co-authored books on Informal Credit Markets and the New Institutional Economics, Women's Work in the World Economy, and Gender, Development, and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered and articles on work intensity and overlapping activities, time use and well-being, environmental degradation and care work, vulnerability, informal employment, urban food security, urban poverty, household savings, credit and asset ownership. She is a member of the Technical Advisory Group for the Economic and Social Costs of Violence Against Women project. Professor Floro currently leads the Hewlett Foundation-sponsored research project on the Care Economy and Gender Sensitive Macromodelling for Policy Analysis.

Nancy Folbre

Professor Emerita of Economics
University of Massachusetts

Nancy Folbre is Professor Emerita of Economics and Director of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Senior Fellow of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. Her research explores the interface between political economy and feminist theory, with a particular emphasis on the value of unpaid care work. In addition to numerous articles published in academic journals, she is the editor of For Love and Money: Care Work in the U.S. (Russell Sage, 2012), and the author of Greed, Lust, and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas (Oxford, 2009), Valuing Children: Rethinking the Economics of the Family (Harvard, 2008), and The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values (New Press, 2001). She has also written widely for a popular audience, including contributions to the New York Times Economix blog, The Nation, and the American Prospect.

Caren Grown

Senior Director, Gender
World Bank Group

Caren Grown, Senior Director for Gender at the World Bank Group, is recognized internationally as an expert on gender and development. Before joining the Bank Group in 2014, she was Economist-in-Residence and Co-Director of the Program on Gender Analysis in Economics at American University. From 2013-2014, she led the UNU-WIDER program on aid effectiveness and gender equality, and from 2011-2013 she served as Senior Gender Adviser and Acting Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment at USAID. Among her previous positions, Dr. Grown has been Senior Scholar and Co-Director of the Gender Equality and Economy Program at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, Director of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Governance team at the International Center for Research on Women, and Senior Program Officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Heidi Hartmann

President
Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR)

Heidi Hartmann is the President of the Washington-based Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a scientific research organization that she founded in 1987 to meet the need for women-centered, policy-oriented research. Dr. Hartmann is also an Economist in Residence at American University and serves as the Editor of the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy.

Dr. Hartmann lectures internationally on women, economics, and public policy; frequently testifies before the U.S. Congress; and is often cited as an authority in various media outlets, such as CNN, ABC News, The New York Times, and PBS NewsHour. She has published numerous articles in journals and books and her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Previously, she has served as Chair of the Board of the American Academy of Political Science, and Treasurer of the National Council of Women’s Organizations.

Adriana Kugler

Professor
McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University

Dr. Adriana Kugler is a Full Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Dr. Kugler earned her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from McGill University with first class honors. Dr. Kugler was Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor in 2011 and 2012 and Vice Provost for Faculty at Georgetown University between 2013 and 2016. Dr. Kugler was an elected member of the Executive Committee of the European Association of Labor Economists and is currently and elected member of the Executive Committee of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association and the Chair elect of the Business and Economics Section of the American Statistical Association. Dr. Kugler also serves in the Technical Advisory Committee of the Bureau of Labor. Her primary research and teaching interests include labor markets and policy evaluation. Her work includes contributions on the role of labor regulations, unemployment, and immigration. Her contribution on the impact of policies and regulations was recognized with the 2007 John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association. Her work has been published in a variety of top general interest and specialized journals and has been covered widely in the media. She is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and Research Fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research, Institute for the Study of Labor, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration and the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford University and at the Center for American Progress. Dr. Kugler has served as Associate Editor of the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Economia, Labor Economics and the Journal of Development Policy.

ShahrashouB Razavi

Chief of Research and Data
UN Women

Shahra Razavi is the Chief of the Research & Data Section at UN Women, where she is research director of UN Women’s flagship report, Progress of the World’s Women. She specializes in the gender dimensions of development, with a particular focus on work, social policy and care. She is also a Member of the IAFFE Board of Directors.

Her recent publications include Seen, Heard and Counted: Rethinking Care in a Development Context (special issue of Development and Change, 2011), Underpaid and Overworked: A Cross-national Perspective on Care Workers (with Silke Staab, special issue of International Labour Review, 2010), and The Gendered Impacts of Liberalization: Towards ‘Embedded Liberalism’? (2009, Routledge, New York).

John Schmitt

Vice President
Economic Policy Institute (EPI)

John Schmitt is the Vice President of Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington, D.C., where he also served as an Economist from 1995 – 2001. Following his earlier tenure at EPI, he spent 10 years as a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and, most recently, was the research director at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Over the last two decades, he has also worked as a consultant to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the European Commission, the Solidarity Center, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and other national and international organizations.

Schmitt has published peer-reviewed research on unemployment, wage inequality, the minimum wage, unionization, immigration, technology, racial inequality, mass incarceration, and other topics. His popular writing has appeared in The American Prospect, Boston Review, BusinessWeek.com, Challenge, Democracy, Dissent, The Guardian, The International Herald Tribune, Salon, The Washington Post, and other publications. His research has been cited widely in the media including The Economist, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Janet Yellen

Distinguished Fellow in Residence
The Brookings Institution

Janet Yellen is a Distinguished Fellow in Residence with the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and is the former Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Prior to her appointment as Chair, Dr. Yellen served as Vice Chair of the Board of Governors, taking office in October 2010. Dr. Yellen is Professor Emerita at the University of California at Berkeley where she was the Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business and Professor of Economics and has been a faculty member since 1980.

Dr. Yellen has written on a wide variety of macroeconomic issues, while specializing in the causes, mechanisms, and implications of unemployment. She is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has served as President of the Western Economic Association, Vice President of the American Economic Association and a Fellow of the Yale Corporation.