Economics PhD student's research paper wins two awards

We are delighted to announce that PhD student Karmini Sharma has won the best student paper award at the Australian Gender Economics Workshop 2021 and at the Women in the Economy: 3rd Annual Workshop.

The Australian Gender Economics Workshop is an annual event that has been running for the last four years. The workshop brings together a global community with the shared goal of understanding what drives gender inequality in the Australian society and economy, as well as what can be done to reduce the inequalities that exist. This year’s event was held online and attracted an increased number of international colleagues and a large number of students who presented their papers during the course of the two days.

Karmini also won the best paper award at the Women in the Economy: 3rd Annual Workshop organised by the Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE) based in Delhi and the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). IWWAGE is an initiative of LEAD, an action-oriented research centre of IFMR Society (a not-for-profit society) and is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The initiative aims to generate new research evidence to inform and facilitate the agenda of women’s economic empowerment by looking at barriers to women working in India. Currently, the labour force participation is one of the lowest in the world and continuing to fall.

In her paper ‘Tackling Sexual Harassment: Evidence from India', Karmini focuses on whether sexual harassment of women by men can be deterred through awareness training for men. Karmini studied whether the deterrence takes place due to changes in intrinsic attitudes and norms against sexual harassment or due to changes in beliefs about them. Her study found that the extreme forms of sexual harassment can be deterred by these trainings with men and presented evidence supporting a change in men's perception of norms as a mechanism behind it.

Professor James Fenske, who supervised Karmini’s research stated:

"Karmini has been doing excellent work experimentally evaluating interventions aimed at tackling sexual harassment in Delhi colleges. It is great to see her paper recognised."