Previous Event
October 10, 2004
"Gender and Poverty in the World Economy"
by Dr. Nilüfer Çagatay, Associate Professor at the University of Utah.
Nilüfer Çagatay is Associate Professor of Economics and a faculty member of the Middle East Studies and Gender Studies Programs at the University of Utah. Between 1997- 2000, she was Economic Advisor at the Social Development and Poverty Elimination Division of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in New York. She has taught courses on feminist economics, international economics, development economics, macroeconomics, political economy of the Middle East, and gender and women in the Middle East at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In 1995, she started the Ph.D. field in economics of gender at the University of Utah, Economics Department and teaches in that field as well in the international economics and development fields.
Nilüfer Çagatays research has focused on gender and development; international trade theories; structural adjustment, gender, macroeconomics and globalization and most recently on engendering macroeconomics and international trade theories and policies. She is the co- founder and coordinator of the International Working Group on Engendering Macroeconomics and International Economics (website www.genderandmacro.org).
She received her BA in Economics and Political Science from Yale University and her MA and Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University. She was born and raised in Turkey.
Synopsis of Presentation: Some view poverty as a violation of human rights (the presenter is of this view). Others hold on to a lazy bum theory of poverty. Westarted with a discussion of the various conceptualizations of poverty and how those illuminate or do not illuminate the ways in which poverty gets reproduced from one generation to the next and the various ways in which women and men experience poverty differently. We then addressed the concept of feminization of poverty, the various controversies and debates about whether the numbers of poor men and women are going down or up and why. We finished with debates on the policy interventions that are used to eradicate poverty and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals that have been agreed upon to fight poverty and eliminate gender bias by international institutions and the obstacles to attaining these goals.References and Resources:
Naila Kabeer, (2003) Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty Reduction and the Millenium Development Goals, Coomonwealth Secretariat/IDRC/CIDA. http://web.idrc.ca/en/ev-33744-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
Nilüfer Çagatay (1998) Gender and Poverty, Social Development and Poverty Elimination Division Working Paper Series 6, Bureau for Development Policy, United Nations Development Programme: New York. http://www.undp.org/poverty/publications/wkpaper/wp5/wp5-nilufer.PDF
Human Development Report 2003 Millennium Development Goals: A compact among nations to end human poverty http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2003/
Millenium Development Goals Website:
http://www.developmentgoals.org/Data.htm and http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_goals.asp
The following are the websites of UNDP and the World Bank and have many more resources on poverty and the latest debates on policy:
http://www.undp.org/poverty/ and http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/