Martha Chen

Martha Chen is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, an Affiliated Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and International Coordinator of the global research-policy-action network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). An experienced development practitioner and scholar, her areas of specialization are employment, gender, and poverty with a focus on the working poor in the informal economy. Before joining Harvard in 1987, she had two decades of resident experience in Bangladesh working with BRAC (now the world's largest non-governmental organization) and in India, where she served as field representative of Oxfam America for India and Bangladesh. Marty received a PhD in South Asia Regional Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author and editor of numerous books including Bridging Perspectives: Labour, Informal Employment, and Poverty (co-edited with Namrata Bali and Ravi Kanbur), The Progress of the World’s Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty (co-authored with Joann Vanek, Francie Lund, James Heintz, Renana Jhabvala and Chris Bonner), Mainstreaming Informal Employment and Gender in Poverty Reduction (co-authored with Marilyn Carr and Joann Vanek), Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture (co-authored with Joann Vanek and others) and Perpetual Mourning: Widowhood in Rural India. Dr. Chen was awarded a high civilian award, the Padma Shri, by the Government of India in April 2011; and a Friends of Bangladesh Liberation War award by the Government of Bangladesh in December 2012.

Selected Publications

Academic Journal/Scholarly Articles

• Chen, Martha. "Informal Employment and Development: Patterns of Inclusion and Exclusion." The European Journal of Development Research 26.4 (September 2014): 397-418.
• Chen, Martha. "Recognizing Domestic Workers, Regulating Domestic Work: Conceptual, Measurement, and Regulatory Challenges." Canadian Journal of Women and the Law/Revue Femmes et Droit 23.1 (April 2011): 167-184.

Books

• Chen, Martha, Joann Vanek, Francie Lund, James Heintz, with Renana Jhabvala and Christine Bonner. Progress of the World's Women 2005: Women, Work & Poverty. United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), 2005.
• Chen, Martha, Joann Vanek, and Marilyn Carr. Mainstreaming Informal Employment and Gender in Poverty Reduction: A Handbook for Policy Makers and Other Stakeholders. Commonwealth Secretariat, 2004.

Book Chapters

• Chen, Martha. "Global Recession and the Informal Economy: Evidence from Latin America and Beyond." The Global Economic Crisis in Latin America. Ed. Michael Cohen. Routledge, May 2012.
• Chen, Martha. "Informality, Poverty, and Gender in the Global South." The International Handbook Of Gender And Poverty. Ed. Sylvia Chant. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010.
• Chen, Martha. "Rethinking the Informal Economy: Linkages with the Formal Economy and the Formal Regulatory Environment." Linking the Formal and Informal Economy: Concepts and Policies. Ed. Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, Ravi Kanbur, and Elinor Ostrom. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Edited Volumes

• Bali, Namrata, Martha Alter Chen, and Ravi Kanbur, eds. Bridging Perspectives: Labour, Informality, and Poverty. SEWA Academy, 2012.
• Chen, Martha, Renana Jhabvala, Ravi Kanbur, and Carol Richards, eds. Membership Based Organizations of the Poor. Routledge: Taylor & Francis, 2007.

Research Papers/Reports

Chen, Martha. "The Informal Economy: Definitions, Theories and Policies." WIEGO Working Paper No. 1, August 2012.