FROGEE Conference

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Removing Obstacles to Gender Equality and

Women’s Economic Empowerment

About the Conference

The FREE Network - the Forum for Research On Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies - and the International School of Economics at TSU (ISET) and its Policy Institute, are delighted to extend a warm invitation to participate in an international conference on gender economics entitled: "Removing Obstacles to Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment". The conference will be held in Tbilisi, Georgia, on 15-16^th November 2019. The conference is organized as part of the FROGEE initiative - the Forum for Research on Gender Economics - supported by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) and coordinated by the Stockholm Institute of Transition

Economics (SITE). The objective of the conference is bringing together researchers, policy-makers, and the broader development community to discuss the obstacles to gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, and policies to remove existing constraints, with a focus on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies.

Our aim is to contribute to the development of national and regional agendas pursuing the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (see UN’s portal here), with a particular focus on Gender Equality (SDG 5), critical to achieving 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Key Note Speakers

Caren Grown, Senior Director for Gender at the World Bank Group, is recognized internationally as an expert on gender and development. Before joining the Bank Group in 2014, she was Economist-in-Residence and Co-Director of the Program on Gender Analysis in Economics at American University. From 2013-2014, she led the UNU-WIDER program on aid effectiveness and gender equality, and from 2011-2013 she served as Senior Gender Adviser and Acting Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment at USAID. Among her previous positions, Dr. Grown has been Senior Scholar and Co-Director of the Gender Equality and Economy Program at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, Director of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Governance team at the International Center for Research on Women, and Senior Program Officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Shahra Razavi joined UN Women as Chief of Research and Data in June 2013. She specializes in the gender dimensions of development, with a particular focus on work, social policy and care. Before that, she was a senior researcher at UNRISD, where she led the institute’s research programme on gender and development. Shahra is the author of more than 40 refereed journal articles and chapters in edited volumes. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the London School of Economics (LSE) and a Masters and PhD from Oxford University.