United Nations Research Institute for Social Development


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  • Iranian
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    Social Policy
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Shahra Razavi

Shahra RazaviShahra Razavi is Research Co-ordinator at UNRISD. She specializes in the gender dimensions of social development, with a particular focus on livelihoods and social policies. She began her collaboration with UNRISD in February 1993, when she joined the Institute to work on a new research initiative to explore the gender dimensions of economic policy (Technical Co-operation and Women's Lives: Integrating Gender into Development Policy). She has led the Institute’s subsequent research projects on gender, including Gender, Poverty and Well-Being; Agrarian Change, Gender and Land Rights; Globalization, Export-Oriented Employment for Women and Social Policy; and work on Gender Justice, Development and Rights which was carried out as part of the Institute's contribution to the Beijing Plus 5 Review Process. More recently, she coordinated the preparation of the UNRISD report (published in 2005), Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an Unequal World. Her current research areas include work on Gender and Social Policy, and the rise of Islamic-based politics and gender equality.

Prior to joining UNRISD, Shahra was working on her D.Phil. Thesis at St.Antony's College (Oxford University). Her thesis explored the gender dimensions of agricultural commercialization in southeastern Iran, where she carried out field research in 1988. She obtained her D.Phil. in December 1992.

Shahra is currently serving on the editorial boards of Development in Practice and Global Social Policy.


Selected recent publications:

Journal articles:
“The return to social policy and the persistent neglect of unpaid care”, Development and Change, Volume 38, No.3; “Liberalization and the debates on women’s access to land”, Third World Quarterly, Special Issue on Market--Led Agrarian Reform: Critical Reflections, 28(8), 2007; “Does paid work enhance women’s access to welfare? Evidence from selected industrializing countries”, Social Politics, Volume 14, No.1, Spring 2007; “’New frontiers of social policy’? and the silences of the ‘Arusha Statement’”, Global Social Policy, 6(3), 2006; “Islamic Politics, Human Rights and Women’s Claims for Equality in Iran”. Third World Quarterly, 27(7), October 2006; ‘Beijing Plus Ten: An Ambivalent Record on Gender Justice’ (with Maxine Molyneux) Development and Change, Vol. 36, No. 6, 2005; ‘Agrarian Change, Gender and Land Rights’, Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 3, Nos.1/2, 2003; ‘Women in Contemporary Democratizaiton’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol.15, No.1, 2001; ‘Seeing Poverty Through a Gender Lens’, International Social Science Journal, No. 162, 1999; Labour-intensive Growth, Poverty and Gender: Contested Accounts’, Development and Change, Vol. 30, No. 3, 1999; ‘Fitting Gender into Development Institutions’, World Development, Vol. 25, No.7, 1997; ‘Excess Female Mortality: An Indicator of Gender Subordination?’, Notizie di Politeia, Vol. 12, Nos. 43/44, 1996; ‘Freedom as a Dimension of Well-being: Some Observations on the Functionings-based Approach’ (with Alessandro Balestrino), Notizie di Politeia, Vol. 10, No. 36, 1994; ‘Agrarian Change and Gender Relations in South-East Iran’, Development and Change, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1994; ‘Agrarian Change in Two Regions of Kerman’, Iran, Vol.29, 1991.

Edited volumes:
Gender and Social Policy in a Global Context: Uncovering the Gendered Structure of “The Social” (co-edited with Shireen Hassim), Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2006.Globalization, Export-Oriented Employment and Social Policy: Gendered Connections (with Ruth Pearson and Caroline Danloy), Palgrave, Houndmills, 2004. Agrarian Change, Gender and Land Rights, Blackwell, Oxford, 2003. Gender Justice, Development and Rights, (with Maxine Molyneux), Oxford Series on Democratization, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002. Shifting Burdens: Gender and Agrarian Change under Neoliberalism, Kumarian Press, Bloomfield, 2002. Gendered Poverty and Well-being, Blackwells, Oxford, 2000. Missionaries and Mandarins: Feminists and Development Organizations, (with Carol Miller), ITU Press, London, 1998.

UNRISD Papers
The Political and Social Economy of Care in a Development Context: Conceptual issues, research questions and policy options, GD PP, No. 3, June 2007; Gender Justice, Development and Rights (with Maxine Molyneux), PP DGHR 10, 2003; Women in Contemporary Democratization, OPG 4, 2000; Gendered Poverty and Social Change: An Issues Paper, DP 94, 1998; Gender Mainstreaming: A Study of Efforts by the UNDP, the World Bank and the ILO to Institutionalise Gender Issues (with C. Miller), OPB 4, 1995. From WID to GAD: Conceptual Shifts in the Women and Development Discourse (with C. Miller), OPB 1, 1995.

Other papers
“Agrarian Change, Gender and Land Rights”, in Legal Empowerment: A Way out of Poverty, Mona Elizabeth Brother and Jon-Andreas Solberg (eds.), Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, June 2006, Issue No.1. ‘From Rags to Riches: Looking at Poverty from a Gender Perspective’, IDS Bulletin, Vol.28, No.3, July 1997; ‘Women, Work and Power in the Rafsanjan Basin of Iran’, Women in the Middle East, in Afshar, H. (ed.), Macmillan, 1994; ‘Fieldwork in a Familiar Setting: The Role of Politics at the National, Community and Household Levels’, in Fieldwork in Developing Countries, Hoddinot, J. and S. Devereux (eds.), Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. ‘Iran: Agriculture and the Contemporary Rural Community’, in Internal Migration in Iran, McLachlan, K.S. and F. Ershad (eds.), SOAS Occasional Paper No.5, 1989.