Esther Arenas-Arroyo is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). She earned her PhD from Queen Mary University of London and was previously a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS). Her research examines how policies, institutions, and technologies shape women’s economic opportunities, political influence, and intergenerational mobility. She has studied how immigration policies not explicitly designed around gender can produce women’s labor supply, fertility, and parental investments in children, and her current research focuses on how the sewing machine expanded women’s market work, strengthened their bargaining power, and improved opportunities for future generations. Combining historical and contemporary evidence with newly constructed datasets, her research advances understanding of women's empowerment.