Placing Gender: Spatial Perspectives on Inequality & Development
The World Bank Gender Group Director for Gender, Dr Robin Mearns, was in Dublin and requested for a joint presentation with DSAI Gender Study Group Convenor (Dr Nita Mishra) and ESRI researcher (Dr Tara McIndoe-Calder) to understand where Irish research on gender was, for future collaborations. Dr Tara Bedi of TCD organised and chaired the session, which occurred in Trinity College.
Gender, inequality, and development are among the most relevant topics in today’s world, and this shaped the discussion. Dr Mearns, spoke about development projects across South Asia and Africa, and the strategies and policies he helped shape to build infrastructure and insurance and support countries’ self-sufficiency, underlining that gender is not a side issue but central to every project and touches all of the Bank’s work. He then linked this to the current jobs agenda strategy of the World Bank.
Drawing on her research on agency and empowerment of women in Vietnam and India, Dr Nita Mishra argued that women's employment choices are often driven by family contexts, rather than a lack of options, and that the choice should be hers to make rather than decided for her. She extended the conversation on gender beyond a male or female binary, addressing racism, minority rights, and how women’s rights are treated differently across countries, alongside her interest in collecting data in different ways, using more artistic approaches.
Dr Mearns pointed to the World Bank’s work with the LGBTQ2+ community in Brazil. Dr Tara McIndoe-Calder then spoke about her work as chair of the Irish Society for Women in Economics (ISWE), founded in 2002], which supports women’s representation and inspires women to study and excel in economics. The session closed with questions on industrial policy, the jobs agenda, where gender fits within it, and how the jobs agenda can support care. For impact, see here.
