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Lourdes Benería gives Distinguished Lecture in Honor of Alice Cook and Lois Gray

The problems faced by women in developing countries began to receive serious attention in the 1970s. Since then, feminist scholars have advanced research and fostered action and public policies to deal with gender inequalities and improve women’s work and life opportunities.

While international organizations and national governments have taken up some of them, many challenges remain across countries, including those related to poverty and inequality. In this lecture, Lourdes Beneria, Cornell emeritus professor and a major leader in these efforts, traces the advances and setbacks in the field of “Gender and Development” – offering her personal and scholarly reflections on where we have come and where we need to go in the age of neoliberalism.

Lourdes Benería is Professor Emerita, Cornell University. She is a leading scholar of women, work, and globalization. She taught in the Department of City and Regional Planning from 1987 to 2010. She had a joint appointment with FGSS and was Director of the Gender and Global Change Program, of the Latin American Studies Program, and of International Studies in Planning.

She now lives in Barcelona, Spain, where she is a Senior Research Associate at IIEDG (Inter-University Institute for the Study of Women and Gender). In 2015, the updated revision of her book, Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics as if all People Mattered was published (co-authored with Gunseli Berik and Maria Floro). She has worked with many international organizations, including the ILO, UNDP and UNIFEM (now UNWomen); and she is a former president of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE).