FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: ROHINI PANDE, MOHAMMED KAMAL PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY

The Women and Public Policy Program was pleased to welcome Rohini Pande, Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, as a member of the WAPPP Faculty Advisory Committee earlier this year.

An economistby training, Rohini’s work focuses on the economic analysis of the politics and consequences of different forms of redistribution, principally in developing countries and regionally in South Asia. She is part of the core faculty of the MPA/ID program, which focuses on training the next generation of analysts and practitioners in the field of international development, and teaches courses on economic development and on the microeconomics of public policy in developing countries.

Gender is an important piece of her work, particularly in India, where in 1993 the government changed the constitution to mandate that one-third of all village leader positions nationwide be reserved for women.  With the support of a WAPPP Faculty Research Grant, Rohini examined the long- and short-term effects of these reservation policies in village councils in West Bengal on Indian villagers’ perceptions of women leaders. A summary of this work can be found in WAPPP’s Spring 2009 edition of Insights.

As part of WAPPP’s celebration of International Women’s Day, Rohini organized an event titled “Evaluating the Gender Variable: Academic and Policy Implications,” which featured several Harvard researchers whose work focuses on gender and international development. She and her colleagues addressed the challenges involved in finding and interpreting the effects of gender in public policy.

Rohini’s work in development and toward the advancement of women extends beyond the University as well. She is a member of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, where she works with other leading researchers to advance our understanding of how to combat poverty throughout the world. In addition, she was recently appointed as a Board member of the Committee of the State of Women in the Economic Profession, a subcommittee of the American Economic Association.

The Harvard Kennedy School and the Women and Public Policy Program are pleased to have Rohini’s expertise and leadership in our community. Before joining Harvard in 2006, Rohini was Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University. She holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, a M.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a B.A. in Economics from St. Stephens College, Delhi University.

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