ICRW welcomes Sarah Gammage, new director of Economic Empowerment and Livelihoods
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The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is thrilled to announce that Dr. Sarah Gammage has joined the organization as the Director of Gender, Economic Empowerment and Livelihoods.
Dr. Gammage previously worked for the organization in the 1990s as an economist, and is now returning to lead ICRW’s work on a number of established and emerging areas, including analyzing time poverty, chore burden, and women’s contributions to informal economies around the world.
“For the past two decades, Sarah Gammage has been a leader in helping policy-makers, researchers, and civil society organizations understand some of the most pressing economic challenges faced by women worldwide,” said ICRW President Sarah Degnan Kambou. “I am excited to welcome her back to the organization, where I know her contributions to the field of economic opportunity for women and girls will fill a gap that will help us better understand what stands in the way of progress for women.”
Prior to joining ICRW, Dr. Gammage was a policy advisor for UN Women, providing leadership and conducting policy research and advocacy on migration, unpaid work and the care economy, poverty, social protection and employment. In this role, she also contributed to the United Nations Secretary General reports on women in development, rural development and violence against migrant women workers and provided technical assistance for the post-2015 process on Sustainable Development Goals from a gender perspective.
Dr. Gammage has also worked throughout Latin America and the Caribbean on issues around gender and economic empowerment. From 2009 to 2014, she worked as a Social Protection and Development Specialist with the International Labor Organization (ILO), providing policy research and technical assistance to governments, unions, and employers in Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Prior to that, Dr. Gammage undertook research on macroeconomic policy, monetary and exchange rate policy, migration, remittances and poverty in Mexico and Central America, while an Economic Affairs Officer with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Before this, Sarah worked as a researcher and development specialist for a number of organizations including ICRW, Development and Training Services, the Economic Policy Institute, and the Solidarity Center on projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America on gender, trade, poverty and inequality, and environmental sustainability.
“I am looking forward to expanding ICRW’s work around economic opportunity, so that our research includes more analysis of care work and around how care deficits are key challenges that affect women’s labor market entry and participation, which contribute to sex-segregation in employment and underpin gender wage gaps around the world,” said Dr. Gammage. “I am eager to contribute to a broader development discourse on why gender equity and gender justice are critical to helping us achieve more sustainable, inclusive economies and societies.”
She has written policy and academic articles on gender and environment, time use and time poverty, women’s labor market insertion, and migration and remittances. She has contributed to the World Social Protection Report and Progress of the World’s Women. Dr. Gammage is also an Associate Editor of Feminist Economics and a member of the International Association for Feminist Economics where she is currently editing a volume with Naila Kabeer and Yana van der Muelen Rodgers on women’s and girls’ voice and agency.
She earned her Ph.D. in Development Studies from the Institute for Social Studies at The Hague, and holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in Economics, both from the London School of Economics and Political Science.