Uma Narayan

"Informal Sector Work, Microcredit and Third World
Women's Economic Empowerment: A Critical Perspective"

Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006
4:30 p.m.
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201

Sponsored by OSU Women in Development

There is considerable enthusiasm in mainstream development circles for providing Third World women with microcredit for informal sector enterprises. Looking at the structural limitations of the informal sector and at the practices of microcredit, Uma Narayan offers a bleaker assessment of this agenda's ability to undermine patriarchy, alleviate poverty, secure economic rights and foster long-term economic development.

Uma Narayan is Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College. She also served as Director of Women's Studies at Vassar. She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University, master's from Poona University in India, and bachelor's from Bombay University in India.

Her books include: Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and Third World Feminism (Routledge, 1997); Reconstructing Political Theory: Feminist Perspectives, co-edited with Mary Shanley (Penn State Press, 1997); Having and Raising Children with Julia Bartkowiak (Penn State, 1999); and Decentering the Center: Postcolonial and Feminist Challenges to Philosophy, co-edited with Sandra Harding (Indiana University Press, 2000).

Dislocating Cultures received the 1998 Schuck Award for the best book on women and politics from the American Political Science Association's Women and Politics Research Section. Narayan also was a Rockefeller Humanities Fellow with the National Council for Research on Women.

Uma Narayan
Professor of Philosophy,
Vassar College