The Global Human Development Program celebrates Professor Shareen Joshi’s recent award of tenure within the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has taught GHDP 502 Political Economy of Development since 2015, one of the first core courses GHD students take in their fall semester. Below are select highlights of Professor Joshi’s accomplishments and long-standing relationship with GHD:
Tell us about your publications: which ones have been your favorites and/or which ones do you feel are the most important?
My research examines the role of women in economic development. I am interested in how the expansion of opportunities for women’s education, nutrition, health, employment, and political participation affects not only for women themselves, but also their children, families, communities, and countries. This idea is not new! There is actually a pretty strong consensus in the academic literature that investing in the human capital of women is the key to sustainable development. There is much less consensus, however, on exactly which types of policies are most effective at making a difference in women’s lives, or how such policies should be designed in large and diverse societies.
My recent research examines three questions at the core of these debates: (1) What kinds of public policies improve women’s well-being over the long term? I examine the impact of several different kinds of policies – family planning, maternal and child-health, cash-transfers, and environmental programs – on women’s health outcomes; (2) How can women’s voices be strengthened at the grassroots level? I examine the potential of women’s groups (such as farmer cooperatives, savings groups) to strengthen their individual and collective agency; (3) How do cultural and religious norms affect women’s opportunities? I explore the economic underpinnings of a cultural practice (i.e., marriage between cousins) and the interaction of gender with caste and religious identity in India.
My approach to answering these questions is largely anchored in the discipline of my training: development economics. The tools of economics, however, sometimes fail to capture the full breadth of factors that shape women’s lives. Unlike the Homo Economicus (or ‘economic man’) of neo-classical economic theory who thinks independently, competes in markets, and makes self-interested choices, a woman in a traditional society typically finds herself at the center of powerful familial and social structures. She typically has weak access to information, markets, and formal institutions. She must cooperate, rather than compete, to exercise her agency. Studying this complexity involves adapting methods of economics and crossing into disciplines such as history, demography, political science, sociology, environmental studies, and area studies. My research methods, though mostly empirical, are thus intentionally broad. They include randomized controlled trials; quasi-experimental studies with longitudinal data; descriptive studies with cross-sectional data; and small-scale studies with original fieldwork. Most of my work focuses on South Asia, a region of the world where gender inequality is extremely pronounced.
I don’t have a favorite publication really. Each one has taken a long time, and involved a long process of research design, data collection, analysis and interpretation. The publication process has been rather arduous at times, but the end result has almost always been worth it! The work that has been particularly meaningful to me in recent years is my new work on the role of women in the caste system of India. That was hard to do because I had to take a rather critical look at the society I grew up in. When I began the project, I was pretty sure that caste divisions in India were on the way out, and that I would not find a lot of caste-based inequality in Indian society, particularly for women. But the more I studied it, the more I realized how wrong I was. Caste divisions are remarkably durable in Indian society and all the years I grew up in India, I was remarkably unaware of my own privilege. This was eye-opening to me, and the experience taught me a lot.
How many years have you been teaching and what elements of teaching do you like the most? Are there any moments that stand out to you from your years of teaching?
I have been teaching for 10 years. I absolutely love teaching. I also understand its importance! This is the profession that engenders every other profession! SFS is a truly wonderful place to teach. I have been fortunate enough to work with people like Carol Lancaster and Steve Radelet. These are some truly remarkable people! When I first came to the School as a visiting professor, I designed a new undergraduate certificate (akin to a minor) in international development. After that, I worked on the curriculum of the GHD program. I was fortunate enough to be part of the GHD family from the earliest times. I remember sitting in on a meeting with Carol Lancaster and all the development folks at the school to brainstorm what this particular MA program should look like. We all had different points of view at that stage, but the one idea that we all aligned on was the importance of the summer internship.
While teaching in GHD I have remained active in undergraduate teaching. I have continued to teach heavily in the International Development Certificate program. I have also designed a lot of electives and interdisciplinary classes. The most noteworthy of these classes are perhaps my first-year Pro-Seminar entitled “The Development of India: Economics, Fiction and Film,” and a sophomore research seminar entitled “Sex, Power and Politics in International Development”. I can’t think of too many places other than SFS where such classes would be encouraged and heavily subscribed!
Are there any moments that stand out to you from your time at GHD? Do you have a favorite experience with GHD students or teaching at GHD?
What stands out to me about GHD is just the sheer dynamism of the program. On the institutional side, it has a lot going for it, of course. Georgetown is a great school, we have a lot of talent to choose faculty from, and leaders like Carol Lancaster and Steve Radelet have managed the program impressively well. But the real magic has always been in the dynamism and energy of the students. We have been lucky to have exceptionally strong students right from the very beginning. The students created culture and social norms that are truly distinctive from the rest of the school. I admire this. I have unfortunately been so tied up with trying to get tenure that I have not been able to participate as much as I would have ideally liked, but I am in awe of what the students have created here and seeing cohort after cohort build on each other’s initiatives and energy has been my favorite part of being at GHD.
Now that you have achieved tenure, what are your upcoming plans for the future?
I am excited about the future. I have a lot of new projects in the pipeline. I am increasingly interested in environmental issues in developing countries. My last couple of papers have been on the crisis of industrial pollution along India’s holiest rivers. This project led me to get interested in how regulation works in developing countries (or lack thereof). I am also interested in the issue of environmental justice. I just got a grant from Georgetown’s Laudato Si fund to study these issues over the next year. The big challenge I face in this work is the sheer size of the datasets that we are working with. To make serious progress on these projects, I will have to teach myself a whole new programming language and also learn the art of working with big data!
I am also excited to spend more time with students in the years ahead. I want to find new and innovative ways to combine my teaching and research. I recently taught an undergraduate research seminar where several undergraduate students undertook serious scholarly research and completed papers in a span of a single semester. I was so impressed that I am now dreaming of a class where all students work on separate questions related to a single issue and dataset. Sort of like a capstone, except everyone is working on one project! Perhaps it could include undergraduates and graduate students. I am not sure how feasible this is, but getting tenure does open up some space to dream a bit!