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2021 - a year marked by unprecedented global challenges that tested our collective resilience.These challenges also had unique implications for women in the fields of Economics and Public Policy. We hope that in this difficult year WiEP gives you a space to connect, learn, and grow. This year strengthened our resolve to continue our efforts to make the field of Economics and Public Policy more inclusive. Therefore, as a first step towards building our identity and expanding the scope of our activities, we reached a big milestone in 2021 – we are now a registered non-profit! We are also happy to share with you some of the other milestones from this year:
We noticed a lack of mentoring opportunities for young women in economics and policy and the pressing need to diversify the fields beyond elite academic institutions. This motivated us to launch the Young Women in Economics Program (YWEP) in September. We inducted a cohort of 140 women students and offered regular skill-building sessions across four months that covered technical and soft skills. We matched a group of 42 students to senior women in the field for one-on-one mentorship and guidance in pursuing their career and academic goals. While the program was open for anyone who identifies as a woman, we prioritized students from Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi, and LGBTQIA+ backgrounds, and students from non-elite academic institutions during the intake.
We continued our efforts to organise events through 2021. These events were curated in a way that they had something for everyone - interactive Q&A sessions with senior women in the field, workshops, career panels, and informal application support coffee hours. We celebrated International Women’s Day in conversation with Dr Rukmini Banerjee (CEO, Pratham Education Foundation) and organised a session with Shobhini Mukherjee (Executive Director, J-PAL South Asia) to learn more about her journey. One of the highlights of the year was collaborating with the Saida Waheed Gender Initiative at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) to organise a panel session on the Impact of COVID-19 on Women in Informal Work across South Asia. We partnered with Equity in Policy Education for a caste sensitisation workshop for the Young Women in Economics Program.
For our members, we conducted workshops on impact measurement, applying to graduate school abroad, and academic writing, and organised career panels on jobs in think tanks and policy consulting. Our informal application support coffee hours saw more than 40 WiEP members take out time to set up virtual coffee hours with prospective graduate school applicants.
We continued to curate the WiEP newsletter, and created 12 editions on topics including identity and social exclusion, inclusive cities, LGBTQIA+ Economics, women in politics, sexual harassment, female entrepreneurship, and gender differences in time use. We also sent out three editions on the main job opportunities available after a degree in economics or public policy: (1) Jobs in the development and policy sector (2) Jobs in the corporate sector (3) Pre-doctoral positions with professors.
All of this would not have been possible without the support from our extraordinary core team, members, and community. We are excited to share that our membership has only grown exponentially - WiEP grew from 730 members at the end of 2020, to over 1500 by the end of 2021! With the support of our organising team, we started thinking about ways to increase our impact, and made the decision to register as a non-profit. We were incorporated as a Section 8 company in India in August.
We are stepping into 2022 with a strong team of Managers, Organising Committee members and interns. With all the lessons we have learned and this growing team, we are excited to share some of our plans for the new year. 2022 will see us ramp up efforts to build collaborations and partnerships, launch new activities and continue to carry out existing ones to grow our impact. We are looking forward to launching Season 1 of our podcast early this year. Our podcast Behind the Scenes of Econ Research (BTS): A podcast on research by women aims to provide increased visibility to the personal and professional experiences of female researchers in a male dominated field. Through the podcast series we wish to demystify the steps and decisions taken during the lifetime of a project by focusing on the research methodologies, field insights and implementation of the study design. This is launching in Feb 2022!
We also look forward to launching another cohort of the YWEP in 2022, with some changes in the structure and size of the program. The YWEP Core Team is reflecting on our learnings from year 1 of the program and thinking of ways to increase scale, and improve targeting towards historically excluded groups. We will continue to host events and career support sessions for our members, and curate the jobs database and newsletters.
As we take a moment to pause and reflect, we want to thank everyone who helped us make it this far. All our members, teams, supporters and well-wishers – who have participated in our activities, shared valuable feedback, and been generous with their time and advice – we would not have gotten this far without each and every one of you. We want to extend our thanks to everyone who joined us in our efforts for a successful lift off for the Young Women in Economics Program and guided us when we were dipping our toes in untested waters. It is truly a collaborative effort that makes us work towards our mission statement of inclusion and gender equality in economics and public policy. Although the start to the year has been anxiety inducing with the third wave, we wish for things to rapidly improve and for you all to have a happy, healthy and safe year.
We are grateful for the journey we had so far and are looking forward to achieving more milestones together as a community!
Best,
Anahita, Prerna, and Ria
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