1265 - Puzzles and Tensions in Women's Education and Employment

Session Submission Type: Paper Session 100min

Description

This session is aimed at critically reflecting on education and employment as drivers of women's empowerment, questioning our assumptions on the meaning of empowerment, and the tensions laden in women's individual and programmatic empowerment projects. It brings together a compelling mix of qualitative and quantitative research grappling to understand the puzzle of women's falling labor force participation; uncovering the tensions between individual empowerment and family relations resulting from an empowerment intervention aimed at integrating girls into the highly-paid workforce; the unanticipated patterns of women's uptake of STEM education in contexts of gender inequity; and a comparison of women workers negotiating their family obligations and career mobility vis-a-vis (in)flexible employment structures. Data, observations, and interviews from India and Cambodia will be the empirical centerpiece of this session

Sub Unit

• Development and Gender

Session Organizer

• Paromita Sanyal, Florida State University

Individual Presentations

• Interpreting Low and Falling Female Labor Force Participation in India: A Puzzle Within a Puzzle - Alaka Malwade Basu, Cornell University

• Bringing It Home: Poverty, Education and Women's Empowerment in India - Patrick Inglis, Grinnell College; Karin Yndestad, Grinnell College

• The Puzzling Relationship between Development and Gender Equity: The Case of Postsecondary Education in STEM Fields - Lara Perez-Felkner, Florida State University; Samantha Nix, Florida State University; John Felkner, Florida State University; Melissa Branca Carvalho Magalhaes, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

• The Individualization of the Social Contract: Women Workers, Rights, and Regulating Femininity - Sara Duvisac

Discussant

• Junmin Wang, University of Memphis