Gender Equality and Economic Development - Esther Duflo

Gender Equality and Economic Development - Bocconi Lecture 2010, organized by Economia e Società Aperta.
Special guest: Esther Duflo. Professor of Economics at the MIT, a recent winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded each year to the best economist under 40, Esther Duflo has profoundly changed the area of development economics. She is the founder and director of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research network specializing in randomized evaluations of social programs in developing countries.

There is a reciprocal and intimate relationship between women's empowerment and economic development. On one hand, development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women; on the other, continuing discrimination against women can, as Amartya Sen has argued, hinder development.
Gender empowerment, defined as improving women's ability to access the constituents of development -- health, education, earning opportunities, rights, and political participation -- can accelerate development.
Economic development, however, is not enough to bring about complete equality between men and women. The potential for women's empowerment and economic development to mutually reinforce each other -- says Duflo -- is not as simple as the image offered by policy makers and social scientists.

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[wasimkhanmd]

it was a beautiful lecture.there is a lot to learn from this.