URIs_MOMENTUM_Research_and_Innovation_Magazine_Spring_2022_M

When a whole constituency is absent from our economic assessment, the result is ineffective policy.

INVISIBLE STRIVING TO MAKE THE VISIBLE

written by ARIA MIA LOBERTI ’20

Equal pay for women remains a hot-button issue in both American and global politics. However, analyzing women’s contributions to and compensation within the workforce and economy gives us a glimpse of only half the story. Many well-accepted economic models are based on gendered assumptions such as the stereotype that women take care of the home and children

while men are the so-called breadwinners, or that families follow a nuclear or heteronormative model. At the University of Rhode Island (URI), economics Associate Professor Smita Ramnarain uses gender as a lens in her research to understand what economic theories might miss in their assumptions and formulations, and the impacts of these omissions. Her research falls at the intersection of feminist

Page 16 | The University of Rhode Island { MOMENTUM: RESEARCH & INNOVATION }