Radhika Balakrishnan


Radhika Balakrishnan is the faculty director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University. Currently, she serves as the Chair of the Board of the United States Human Rights Network and Chair on the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and is a Commissioner for the Commission for Gender Equity for the City of New York.

Biography

Radhika Balakrishnan grew up in Tamil Nadu, India and moved to Chicago, Illinois when she was 13 years old. She attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign initially to study engineering, but switched majors and graduated in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. It was at the University of Illinois that Balakrishnan first became involved in the women's movement, which inspired her to study economics. In 1985 she received her Master of Arts in Economics, and in 1990 she received her Ph.D. in Economics, both from Rutgers University.

Career

From 1992 to 1995, Radhika Balakrishnan worked at the Ford Foundation as a program officer in the Asian Regional Program. From 2003 to 2009, she was a professor at Marymount Manhattan College where she taught economics and international studies In September 2009, she joined Rutgers University as a professor of Women's and Gender Studies and the executive director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership, where she focused on issues of economics and social justice from a feminist perspective as they relate to macroeconomic policy, especially in health and education. Radhika Balakrishnan now serves as the faculty director of the Center.

Interviews

Radhika Balakrishnan's primary research interests are gender and development, human rights and the global economy, and human rights and economic social rights.
Balakrishnan's publications include:

Books