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Speakers: Amit Patel, Assistant Professor, McCormack Graduate School for Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston
Ammar Malik, Director, EPoD Research
About the Talk: Environmental degradation reduces the environmental capacity to meet social and ecological needs of societies, which is exacerbated by natural hazards and extreme climate events, and often intensify existing vulnerabilities. Marginalized groups in cities, particularly women and poor, are disproportionately at risk to face negative consequences of such environmental stressors. To better understand relationship between women empowerment and environmental degradation in cities, we surveyed 1,199 households in 12 informal settlements of New Delhi (India), Dhaka (Bangladesh), and Islamabad and Lahore (Pakistan). Using this data, we created the Empowerment in Informal Settlements Index (EISI) and the Women’s Empowerment in Informal Settlements Index (WEISI) that systematically measure men’s and women’s empowerment. We found that women were significantly less empowered than their male counterparts in all three countries, with widest gaps in Pakistan. We tested several linkages between empowerment and measures of environmental degradation using regression analyses and found many significant associations.
About the Speakers:
Amit Patel, PhD: Amit Patel is Assistant Professor at University of Massachusetts Boston’s McCormack Graduate School for Policy and Global Studies. Amit’s research focuses on bottom-up approaches to improve socio-economic outcomes for urban poor. His main research projects funded by the National Science Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Urban Institute, and the World Bank focus on housing and health disparities concerning urban poor living in slums in the Global South. He regularly teaches courses on public policy theories, urban politics and policies, and advanced quantitative methods. Amit has a PhD in public policy from George Mason University and prior training in management, urban and regional planning, and architecture. When he is not in the field or in front of the computer, you will find him behind the camera.
Ammar Malik: Ammar A. Malik is the Director of EPoD Research. He leads research-policy engagements that derive actionable policy insights from rigorous research. He oversees EPoD’s labor market and education research portfolios in the Middle East, identifying and supporting opportunities for data and economic analysis to inform local policies that empower underrepresented groups and support social and economic development.