Women comprise over half the global population, but represent 70% of the world’s poor. Compared to their male counterparts, low-income females in developing countries are more likely to drop out of school, are less apt to secure gainful and remunerated employment, and are the most likely to be excluded from household, community, and national decision-making processes. Women’s empowerment in development—an expanding area of interdisciplinary research and practice—confronts these staggering inequalities head-on. Despite the growing emphasis on investing in women for community-wide change across international development disciplines, how empowerment should be conceptualized and defined, and which indicators should be used to assess it remain unclear.

At the same time, development practitioners are increasingly required to work effectively on interdisciplinary teams. Yet in the university classroom, practitioners-in-training are often taught to conceptualize, understand, measure, and evaluate problems and solutions solely along discipline lines. Moreover, graduate students—our practitioners-in-training—often occupy peripheral roles on applied interdisciplinary teams, due to the complex nature of working across fields. This has resulted in a disconnect between training and the workforce.

The overall objective of our project and interdisciplinary team of graduate students, practitioners, and professors is to address (1) conceptual debates of women’s empowerment across disciplines, (2) methodological challenges in measuring empowerment in development research, and (3) real-world policy and practice applications of women’s empowerment in international development programming. Over the 2015-2016 academic year, we will organize a series of Brown Bag lectures and two symposia—all of which are open to the UIUC community and broader public. These events fall into three modules, which build upon one another:

 
• Conceptual Debates Module
• Methodological Concerns Module
• Practice and Policy Applications Module

Throughout the year, participants will work with experienced practitioners to explore the possibilities, challenges, and future directions of working on interdisciplinary teams in the field of gender and international development. For the broader UIUC and international development communities, this project will facilitate practical engagement with national and international development researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in the area of gender and development. For students, this platform will simulate the real-word process of development policymaking and practice, and will teach vital professional skills to invest in the job market later on.