Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the GDI, University of Manchester, UK. She has been Director and Professor, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, India; President, International Society for Ecological Economics; President, International Association for Feminist Economics; and Vice President, International Economic Association. She has held distinguished positions at Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, Minnesota and Michigan.
Agarwal’s 16 books and over 86 papers cover varied subjects: property and land rights, agrarian change, environmental governance, law, and poverty and inequality, written especially from a political economy and gender perspective. Her multiple prize-winning book, A Field of One’s Own (Cambridge University Press, 1994), placed women’s land rights on the global policy agenda. In 2005 she also led a successful civil society campaign for making India’s Hindu Inheritance law gender equal. Her recent books include Gender and Green Governance (OUP, 2010); Gender Challenges (OUP, 2016), a three volume compendium of her selected papers; and Gender Inequalities in Developing Economies (2021) in Italian translation.
Her many awards include a Padma Shri from the President of India in 2008; the Leontief Prize 2010 ‘for advancing the frontiers of economic thought’; the Louis Malassis International Scientist Prize 2017; and the International Balzan Prize 2017.
The page has been updated in May 2024.
