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Update your browserThe best advice I have ever received from someone about my career was on the day of my PhD defence. They told me “no one will ever know your research more than you do”. It has stayed with me ever since. We pour so much work, energy, and a piece of ourselves into the research we do and it’s easy to forget this in moments of self-doubt, especially in a competitive profession. That advice was a reminder to nurture what we build, and to carry the confidence that comes with truly owning your work.
Economics and quantitative methods can complement qualitative insight by helping to show the scale of what qualitative research uncovers: how many people are affected, by how much, and where resources, power, and institutional capacity are most unequally distributed. This kind of evidence can be very useful to inform policy because it makes inequality visible and difficult to ignore. At the same time, much of my own thinking has been shaped by work in sociology, history, and political science, which brings essential attention to context, institutions, and meaning.
I think of research as standing on the shoulders of giants, but these giants are rarely a single breakthrough. They are a complex, interwoven body of work, evolving across time and context. My work will change the world the same way all good academic work does: by adding to that scaffold. It will hopefully be cited in academic papers, white papers or policy briefs. I also spend a lot of time making sure my research is disseminated so that it crosses the borders of academia. I hope my work changes the world in this collective and cumulative way.
Suneha is an applied micro-economist specialising in gender, labour markets, and development with over ten years of combined academic and policy experience. Her work uses applied microeconometric methods and an interdisciplinary lens to analyse gendered inequalities in labour markets, health, and social protection. She links survey, administrative, and geospatial data to quantify disparities, uncover underlying mechanisms, and generate policy-relevant evidence. She is the quantitative lead for the development of the Gender Equality @ Work Index at the University of Sydney, and her ongoing projects focus on the measurement of gender inequalities, gender norms, climate–gender interactions, and social protection.
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