Janis Barry, Ph.D., associate professor of economics, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, has received a Fulbright scholar grant for the fall 2006 semester at Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland, where she will teach and conduct research on “The Importance of Gender for Understanding the Economics of Globalization.”
“This is an amazing opportunity for me; I’ve taught women’s studies students with no background in economics, and I’ve taught economics students with no background in women’s studies or gender issues,” said Barry, who helped found the Women’s Studies Program at Fordham, and was its co-director for four years. “Abo Akademi wanted someone who could teach women’s studies students economics as it applies to gender issues, and economics from a feminist economics point of view. You couldn’t ask for a better fit.”
Barry, who has taught at Fordham for 23 years, specializes in labor and health economics, industrial organization, and economics as it relates to women’s studies and gender issues. She has published widely in academic journals and books, and has received a number of grants and awards, including a Ford Foundation grant; participation in National Diversity and Public Problem Solving Summer School at Harvard University, and a National Science Foundation faculty development workshop; and multiple Fordham Faculty Fellowship awards.
The U.S. Department of State calls the Fulbright program the “flagship international educational program sponsored by the United States Government… designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.” The program provides teaching and research grants for graduate students, scholars and professionals, and teachers and administrators from the U.S. and other countries.
“Much of what I’ll be doing is cross-country comparisons: women in the workplace, in the family, in agriculture,” Barry said. “Finland has the highest rate of female participation in the labor force in the world, so I’m going to a country where women work—and the reason why they do is that they have a national infrastructure of high-quality child care. In comparison there is no real program addressing daycare or child care needs in the U.S. I’ll be showing young women in Finland how advanced, how unusual their system is.”
